


Crash Course

by BowandAroAce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Guns, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Referenced Genocide, Science Fiction, Swearing, Trans Dave, hinjinks ensure, it's a goddamn subplot bananza, there will probably be like forty subplots going on at once, trans vriska
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2020-05-03 13:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 64,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19182127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BowandAroAce/pseuds/BowandAroAce
Summary: If you think that an alien ship has crashed near your house at midnight, then you should definitely NOT go check it out, especially if you're only armed with a flashlight, a shitty sword, and your dorky best friend.Dave Strider, unfortunately, never had the chance to heed this warning when a group of young 'trolls' crashed their escape pod in a field behind his house. With several of the aliens injured and possibly sick, Dave decides to take them in, while keeping them hidden. But now, Dave and his teenage friends are caught between a dangerous government investigation, and a tyrannical alien empress who would rip apart the universe the find the runaway traitors, and kill them.





	1. There are weirder ways to learn about space - Dave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter has undergone some simple rewrites and edits to match the writing style of the latter chapters. If you're a long time reader, I recommend rereading this chapter. If you're new here, please note that there is a noteable drop in quality between the first and second chapter, so please, bear with me. Aside from all of that, enjoy the story :)

It was the sound of explosions that woke me up.

I jolted awake and opened my eyes, the way you do when you're 90% asleep and you trip in your dream. Flailing my limbs around, messing up my bedsheets, and realizing just how uncomfortable my former sleeping position was. My breathing heaved as I felt the urge to sit straight up in bed and start just… shrieking at the top of my lungs, or something. As you do. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest the way that a butcher in anger management pounds a slice of beef.

I sighed loudly and relaxed against my pillow. My eyes shut, and I rolled over. Whatever time it was, it was going to take my ages to fall back asleep. I couldn’t remember what I was dreaming, it had been loud, and explosive, and bright. Something big and dramatic enough to cause me to trip and wake up. I shut my eyes tighter, trying to force myself into a state of sleep.

But, the ear-splitting popping noise sounded again.

My eyes shot open again. That was no noise from a dream, that was an actual explosion. I grunted and sat up in bed, more irritated than I was curious. I tried to rub the tiredness in my bleary eyes. After they adjusted to the blurry darkness of my room, I twisted to look over at the big window on the other side of my room. I squinted, trying to see anything that made sense. Unfortunately for me, my eyes were being uncooperative, as instead of seeing clearly, I kept seeing multicolored flashes in the sky outside my window.

I paused and blinked a couple of times.

No, wait a second. I was wrong, my eyes _weren't_ playing tricks on me. There were undoubtedly multicolored flashes from outside my window.

Filled with puzzled curiosity, I swung my legs over the side of the bed to stand up. The wooden floor of my room was cold, and I winced as the freezing feeling shot up my legs and made me shiver. _Curse my stupid brother for always making the house colder than an Antarctican igloo while we’re in the middle of October._ I reached out behind me and grabbed my phone from the bedside table, and took a step forward. The clock on my desk read _12:26 AM._

I looked out the window. The patch of sky outside made a smaller _pop-pop-pop_ ping noise and it erupted with red and blue color like an illegal firework that didn’t undergo proper safety testing.

If I could whistle, I would’ve whistled lowly, like people in movies do when they see something impressive. But I couldn’t whistle, so I was left gaping like an idiot, a good twelve feet away from my window in the first place. So, with my phone in my hand, I walked over to where the window was, and peered outside.

Another, far bigger explosion wreaked across the sky in bright red and blue, even brighter than the last. It looked like a concentrated lightning storm in the sky, mixed with some kind of combustible Northern Lights. This was significantly louder as well, so it caused me to flinch again, and my eyes darted around frantically, searching for the source of the wondrous yet terrifying sight.

My eyes landed on the newest flash in the sky, which looked scarily like a comet, hurtling towards the earth. It looked like a bright red shape falling through the deep blue sky.

The red… _thing_ fell with surprising speed, emitting a red and blue aura as it got closer and closer to the Earth. And really, it didn't land as much as it crashed, violently hitting somewhere past the horizon in yellowish, open field behind my house. A final explosion sounded, sending up a cloud of something firelike and an absurd amount of smoke. After that there was no noise at all, just a cloud of smoke and a faraway light.

It landed far… but not _that_ far.

Methodically, and without any hesitation, I turned on my phone and called John.

I held my phone up to my ear, listening and waiting, though still watching the flares of the strange, exploding crash site in the distance.

Eventually, the tones from the phone stopped, and my best friend’s voice filled my ears.

“What the fresh hell do you want?” John snapped, and I expected no less. He sounded both annoyed and half asleep. “It’s literally the middle of the night, so this better be good, or I’m going to kill you for ruining my sleep cycle again.”

“Yeah, uh huh.” I monotoned, practically pressing my face to my window to get a better look at the explosion. “What if I told you that I think I just saw an alien ship crash?”

John groaned, and I heard the sound of what was unmistakably his hand hitting his forehead. “Really, Dave?”

“Look out your window.” I shrugged. 

A trail of thumps from the other line that sounds like loud footsteps on carpet, followed by several grumpy, vaguely complaining noises from an exhausted John. I did feel like a bit of a jerk for waking him up at midnight for this, but I knew he’d thank me later. He’s lucky I called him instead of the police.

There were several moments of uncomfortable silence on the phone.

“John?” I nervously fill the silence.

“Meet me outside of your backyard in ten minutes. Bring your flashlight and your sword.”

He didn’t say another word after that sentence, and instantly hung up on me after he finished. My lips had half-formed the word _“wait,”_ but it was too late, he was gone. Typical. Absolutely typical Egbert. Not knowing how to react, I sat there staring at the _call ended_ on my phone’s screen. At least John was wasting no time, but he hadn’t given us much time to gather ourselves and go.

John was a big fan of all things paranormal, and the concept of aliens really interested him. He really was the dorky kid at school who wore NASA shirts and got overly excited whenever we talked about space in science class. Seeing those unfamiliar flares in the sky might’ve just made his day- or, rather, night.

I scavenged my bathrobe from the floor of my room, tying it over my pajamas. After three minutes of stubborn searching, I found one slipper under my bed and the other behind my door. My aviator sunglasses were completely unnecessary, and as a result of that, they were completely, ironically necessary. It was hilarious. I had a great, super ironic sense of humor, no matter what all three of my friends said about it. I remembered that John had also told me to bring my sword, and while I doubted that I needed it, I figured that if it would at least make him feel more safe, than why the hell _not_ bring it? My sword was still hanging on the wall, and I chose to use it instead of any of the fancy ones that my Bro collected. There were a multitude of dangerous, sharp objects scattered around the house, none of which I fancied taking in this scenario.

Before I could sneak out of the house, I checked my Bro was still fast asleep, and that I remembered to leave everything the way I found it, just in case.

By the time I made it to the rendezvous spot John had announced, it was 12:37 in the morning.

 _This isn’t a normal night._ That sentence echoed around in my head, and I began to realize why. No cars were driving on the road. No wind was blowing my pale blonde hair into my face. No crickets chirped in the grass. It was completely and utterly silent.

I shifted uncomfortably. I didn’t like that at all, and my eyes moved from the stars on the horizon line to the ground.

To my right, I heard footsteps and the dirt and gravel path. I looked to my right to see John speed-walking down the dirt trail, eyes fixed on the strange site in the distant field. He was also in his pajamas, though he’d taken to wearing a blanket tied around his shoulders, unlike my bathrobe. He was wielding a sledgehammer that was threatening to fall out of his feeble grip, which I’m sure he’d excuse as ‘self defense against potential hostile aliens.’ On the other hand, there was a heavy-duty flashlight pointing at the ground, very similar to mine.

He stopped a few feet beside me. We stared at each other for a few seconds in silence, which was something we did often as a joke. John’s face split into a grin all of a sudden, and he seemed to be resisting the urge to squeal like an eight-year-old.

“Couldn’t miss it for night’s sleep, eh?” I comment dryly.

John’s startlingly blue eyes darted over to me. “I hope you’re not joking, Dave. This is serious- absolutely crazy! This might actually be aliens! I sure am lucky you’re a light sleeper.”

“Lightest of all,” I agreed, and I turned toward the field. “You’re lucky that I found a good flashlight and didn’t settle for the pink Hello Kitty one that I found on my kitchen counter. Y’know, the kind you have to crank up? No matter, ol’ Dave Strider settles for the best, doesn't he?”

John crossed his arms, and his face lit up with a grin. “Yeah, yeah. Come on.”

Expectedly, John took the lead, marching through the field of long, itchy grass. He jumped in fear and shone his flashlight around whenever a cricket jumped out at him. But, we pressed on, still walking in the direction of the flares.

Now, I was realizing that the flares were dying down. There wasn’t any noise, the lights going up in the night sky were now fading, and something about it was terribly unsettling. Maybe I was just paranoid. I must be, I had to be, I didn’t know why else I’d feel so weird. I don’t know for how long we walked. My gaze was constantly shifting between the glittering stars in the sky, the desaturated grass on the ground, the horizon line we were walking to. John hardly spoke, so I didn’t either. We were focused and tired, and so incredibly unsure of all we were seeing. 

The grass was cold and crunchy. I was grateful it hadn’t snowed yet, but I was wishing that I’d brought a heavier coat. Even after living in Washington for four and a half years, I was way more adapted to the constant heat of southern Texas. As for John, he didn't seem bothered by the nighttime chill, but the paranoia had gotten to him. At every odd noise and and moment of silence too long, John would freak out, shouting _“What’s that?”_ or _“I think I heard something.”_ I didn’t snap at him though, I knew it would kill his spirit.

“What’s that?” John cried, probably rhetorically, like he had meant the past forty times he’d called wolf.

But this time, he must’ve actually seen something, because I saw it too. And heard it, and smelled it. Smoke was rising from a hill a ways in front of us, and the smell was putrid- like charred metal and battery acid, it probably could've even stung my eyes. Sounds of movement and soft metal scraping were there too, though so quiet and distant that I had to shut my eyes and truly focus to hear it.

“The smoke’s getting closer!” John exclaimed, pointing to it in excitement.

Before I could comment or agree, he'd taken off again, running toward the riding smoke. I followed, but slower.

We were now rounding over the suspicious hill, which was just tall enough that I couldn't see over it. It was covered by the same matted, dry, yellowish grass as the rest of the field was, but the smell behind it was overwhelming now. One foot after another, I stomped up the crunching grass of the hill trying to peer up over it to see what lay behind. Upon reaching the top, my eyes followed down the slope of upturned dirt, smoke, and then… there it was.

John and I were both beside ourselves with awe when we saw it.

“Holy shit,” John said, and laughed incredibly nervously.

There was a large, unnatural crater that had dug itself deep into the dirt, still sending up dust all around it. But what mattered more than the crater were the contents inside.

It was unmistakably a spaceship. It was smaller than expected, and bright red. Clearly, it was in a heap, damaged beyond repair, sparking and making sad creaking noises. Sharp-edged and angular, broken and so blatantly _alien_ . A particular plate- probably a former wall- was laying over the top, making it impossible to see what was actually inside the ship. Literally a spaceship, lying in the dirt. Literally a fucking spaceship sitting in a random-ass field in Tacoma Washington that just _happened_ to be found by, of all people, me. What the absolute shit-tingling fuck.

“What. Is. That.” I whispered in spite of myself.

All of a sudden, that very red wall began to give off a faint glow. A glow that wasn't from our flashlights, the moon or any other outside light.

But my string of whispered curses was cut off with a short, terrified yelp, coming from John. I stood frozen, not knowing what to do. There was a scratching howl coming from the plating, which had appeared to upend itself, peeling upward from the crater. I stumbled backward as it lifted into the air, the red glow brightening. As this was happening, it was sounding off a horrible, metallic, noise of both scraping and shrieking.

“What the shit, what the fuck, WHAT THE FUCK?!” I repeated, not being able to do or say anything else as I was frozen in terror. 

John had taken several backward paces away, though he hadn’t turned tail and ran yet. He looked ready to scream again, and admittedly, I was too. I held out my sword threateningly, though it was difficult as I held my flashlight in the other hand.

The plate had completely folded back on itself. Just when I thought that it stopped moving, it was completely blown off its hinges, shooting couple feet into the air with a distinct arc, before finally crashing down into the ground on the opposite side of the crater that me and John were standing by. John and I looked at each other in disbelief. Neither of us had a clue of what to say or where to even begin.

I looked back to the spaceship. Hypothetically, it was possible to see whatever was inside the spaceship now, but John and I were presumably both too scared to do so. We didn't step forward, but we didn't run away.

A hand shot up from the spaceship’s unknown interior.

We both yelped again.

Flashlights aimed to shine a light on whatever this creature was. Soon, following the hand, out popped an obscured head and a pair of shoulders.

“An alien?” John squeaked out, his voice rising an octave halfway through ‘ _alien_ '.

The head tilted upward, revealing the creature’s face, which we shone our flashlights on.

It looked... surprisingly human? The same eyes, ears, nose and mouth, all in normal, humanoid locations. But, with the help of the light, I could tell that the creature’s skin was an ashy grey. There was a small cut on its cheek, leaving a trail of unnaturally bright red blood down its face. Unbrushed black hair, and what looked like two tiny orange _horns_ poking out of the hair.

It looked scared, but mostly just exhausted.

“H...help…help us...” the creature managed to cough out, before collapsing onto the ground.


	2. It was no "Great Escape" - Karkat

**Traveling night 15** ****  
**Helios star system** ****  
**Fuel levels: Low** **  
****Ship status: Critical**

I still didn’t know why I was so paranoid, even after pacing for hours.

The journey away from home had started over two weeks ago, and each one of the days had been spent completing a certain task.

The first three days had been spent by Sollux and Equius to hack into the pod’s tracking system and disable it, which I know had worked, but it completely fried our navigation system in the process. The two tech geniuses took the fourth day to fix the navigation system. On the fifth day, we cracked open the ship’s emergency rations, because we'd really underestimated how much food to bring.

The sixth day was when the boredom began to hit us, and we tried inventing a million different games to keep the more hyperactive trolls entertained, because the pod was far too small to play tag. Gamzee switched from his normal sopor he ate to the sopor tablets, which we could clone more easily. On the seventh day, the pod ran low on fuel, so Sollux willingly plugged himself into the ship to charge it. On the eighth day, Sollux collapsed with a fever and migraines, because _apparently_ , ‘you can’t plug an underage psionic into a large device for extended periods of time.’ Luckily the power he provided for one day for more than enough to get us through (hopefully)

It wasn’t until the twelfth day that something interesting happened again, and our ship was hit by an asteroid. There was no way of getting out to fix it, and the asteroid didn’t hit any vitals, so we just prayed that we could make it a little longer.

On the thirteenth day, we ran out of food.

On the fourteenth day we began to truly panic. Everyone was arguing and unhappy and so very hungry. Those who didn't have to energy to pick a fight with someone slept through the day.

And for this very, fifteenth day, as much time as I had to myself, I still couldn’t figure why I was always looking over my shoulder like someone was following us.

So I spent my time pacing in circles, annoying the hell out of everyone around me.

“I’m really starting to hate the color red.” A voice echoed from behind me.

I glanced back to Feferi, the one who had spoken, and sighed dramatically. She was one of the few trolls that was still managing to stay optimistic. She broke up fights when they got physical, and promised everyone that we'd be okay. “I think we all are.” I growled coolly. “There’s way too much fucking red on this ship- why did the Batterwitch have to make everything such a bright red?! It’s hurting my eyes.”

“I don’t think Terezi’s too sick of it.” Feferi said with a small laugh. “I think she had an aneurysm when we first got on the pod.”

I groaned, burying my face in my hands, “Don’t _remind_ me. She wouldn’t fucking shut up about how ‘delicious’ the pod tasted. I was scared to touch the fucking wall with how many times she licked it!”

Feferi nodded in understanding. “But I think it’s just a good thing we’re getting to Earth now.”

“How much longer until we land?”

“Only an hour or two. Now that we’re actually in the Helios system, we’re in the same area as Earth. Didn’t you sea the big gas giant planet we passed? The humans call it ‘Jupiter.’”

“I saw it, alright,” I confirmed. “It was goddamned terrifying.”

“More like awesome!!” Feferi smiled widely, nudging my shoulder. “Don’t you wish we had planets like that back on Alternia?”

“Absolutely not.”

Before Feferi could throw herself into the next stage of this unwanted conversation, we both heard Sollux calling her name from behind us. I turned and saw Sollux leaning against the doorframe to the control block (There were only two blocks on the ship; control and observation). He was smiling, which was already rare for Sollux, and even more rare, knowing the fact that he’s been overworked and exhausted these past few days.

Feferi gave a quick, “Gotta go!” and jogged over to where her matesprit was standing.

Once she was gone, I returned to staring out the window, but now I sat down on the floor. My feet and stomach were starting to hurt. Either way, standing or sitting, I was relieved to have a bit of peace and quiet (just like the solitude I’d been sitting in for several hours beforehand).

The pod was approaching a distant asteroid belt, which I knew was going to take time to navigate through.

I pulled my knees into my chest and leaned against the window.

With the noise of the whirring engine of the escape pod, some of my friends enthusiastically chatting in the room, and my own off breathing, I fell into a fragile sleep against the windows.

~o0o~

_I’m stumbling through a cave, fighting to exit. There are people all around me, mostly jades and olives. Lots of younger kids with a few older ones. They’re weeping tears of joy and astonishment. Murmuring to me thank-yous and blessings and pleas for help. Pushing each other and reaching out to touch my hands and sleeves, and when they did, their face would light up like they’d just met a god. They weren’t frightening- just desperate. One of the older jades offers me an iron medallion with my sign on it. I run out of the cave in fear._

_I’m walking down the streets of the city on a foggy night, where no moons can be seen in the sky. I’m here to visit Sollux, who lives at the top of a hive stem. I tilt my head up to look at a rain-lashed billboard, flashing through images of imperially required wanted posters; this week’s most wanted criminals. My eyes widen in shock as I see my own face staring right back at me. All of a sudden I feel I’m being watched._

_There’s a floppy clothing container in my hands. It’s not very full. I’d only packed a few changes of the same clothes, and a few DVDs of my favorite movies. I’m running out of my hive. I can hear the drones overhead. I’m about forty feet out of the door when I hear the unfavorable sound of my hive exploding. I keep running. If I’m lucky the drones will assume I’m dead._

_A man is standing in front of me, as if I_ were _him, looking at myself in a mirror. He’s wrapped in tattered grey. I can’t see his face, but I feel something as hot as burning irons clasped around my wrists._

**_Wake up, Karkat._ **

~o0o~

My eyes flickered open, and I was surprised by two things. 1. The drastic change in scenery outside the window, and 2. My friends all freaking out like they’d just collectively lost their shit.

The ship was shaking, and alarms were blaring in my ears. The tremors going through the ship’s floors knocked me from my place by the windows, and sending me skidding across the floor. From a distance, I tried to snap out of my initial shellshock to see out the window.

At a great speed, we were hurtling through the atmosphere of a planet. The planet was blue and green, and we were heading for a green part- hopefully the land. I couldn't tell for sure what was the ocean and what was the land, with my familiarity to Alternia’s turquoise land and purple oceans.

“What the fuck happened?!” I yelled, turning my head around, looking for someone to yell at.

My gaze landed on Kanaya, who--as soon as she saw me--dropped to the floor and placed her hands on my shoulders for stabilization. She looked worried and scared. “We're entering Earth’s atmosphere.”

“No shit!” I shouted, because that was the only way to hear someone over the alarms.

“The pod is not very pleased with the damage it's already suffered, combined with the entry to this planet. We are not having a soft landing, for sure!

I blink, incredulous. “We're gonna _crash_?!”

“It’s guaranteed, what did you expect!” An angry voice shouts from behind me which was followed by a curt, “ _Shut up, ED!”_

Everything was happening so fast.

Minutes had barely passed before we were looking closely at the detailed ground we were bound to crash into. Everyone was screaming clinging to each other. There was even more chaos from the control room, though I couldn't see it.

It was a field below us, though it looked weirdly yellow. We wouldn't be crashing into any Earth-hives, though there were some nearby.

Clenching my fists and closing my eyes, I braced for impact.

And the impact of the crash rattled the whole pod, shaking us to the bone and sending us into darkness.

Darkness.

Silence.

Nothing.

My lungs felt like they were filled with dust, and I couldn't see a thing. I was uncomfortably laying on the floor, all of my limbs in rather unnatural positions. Even with my night vision, it was near impossible to see a thing

So i winced and squinted my eyes when a sudden light filled my vision.

From a few feet away, I could now see that Tavros had a small bubble of controlled fire, burning from his hand. His face was melted into terror in pain, as he was lying closely against one of the walls.

My bloodpusher dropped in my chest when I noticed a large piece of wretched shrapnel, impaled into Tavros’ knee.

I coughed violently in an attempt to speak. “Knee.” I croaked, pointing a shaky finger at it.

He looked horrified when he noticed what I pointed out, but he reacted instantly, by taking his hand to it, and wrenching the shrapnel shards from his knee. At this, Tavros cried in agony, and bronze blood began dripping onto the floor.

I felt physically nauseous.

The next “person of interest” was Aradia, who was sitting mostly upright. She had her arms extended up, and he hands were glowing red.

I could tell what she was going to do; Use her telekinesis to rip off the roof and free us from the ship.

And that was exactly what she did. A shrieking noise emitted from the metal walls of the ship as starlight began pouring inside. I heard some unfamiliar yelps of fear from outside of the ship.

 _Earthlings?_ I began to drag myself across the floor, to we the light was pouring out.

It didn't take too long and soon, I shot my hand out of the pod, and dragged myself into the light.

Bright light was shining in my face, and I was squinting to hard to see who is providing it. I began mumbling incoherently, trying to provide some kind of introduction or explanation.

A plea for help.

That was all I had the strength to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never did I think a spaceship crashing would be so hard to write!!! Sorry I took so long to update, I was on vacation and didn't have my computer (or decent internet connection).
> 
> Again, feedback and grammar corrections are welcome!


	3. You're Embarrassing Me in Front of the Aliens - Dave

There are many sentences that are so wild that I could even possibly  _ THINK _ about ever saying them. Among this odd cacophony of unthinkable sentences is the very phrase I had to tell John, just then.

“John,” I hesitantly tap him on the shoulder, “Don't poke an unconscious alien with the sledgehammer. Put it down.”

John pulled away the hammer. “I was just checking to see if it was dead!”

“You won't get anywhere with that, dude. You're not even looking for a pulse or heartbeat.”

I squatted down, both to poke the unconscious alien in front of me, and to get a look inside the ship. From what I could see, there was movement inside.

“More aliens, more aliens!” John could've been jumping up and down from the sheer joy he was exerting.

I ignored him, fearing that he might come off as rude. 

“Hello?” I called down into the echoing ship. “Is anyone awake down there? Alive and kicking?”

There was a bout of coughing from someone down below.

I squinted, trying my best to look past my sunglasses at the stirring creatures with the spaceship. I considered calling out again, but I figured I'd be annoying or frightening these people.

Vaguely, I saw two shadows moving closer to the opening in their ship, proceeding to climb out from the slanted surface that led below.

I stepped back, shining my flashlight at them.

These two were girls, from what I could tell. One had short hair and a red skirt, and the other had long hair with big ram horns.

The short haired girl gasped when she saw the unconscious boy on the floor. “Oh my goodness, Karkat!” she cried, falling to her knees instantly to check on him.

Ram-horns girl proceeded forward toward us, seeming to float rather than walk.

John cleared his throat loudly, and I tried not to get mad at him. “Aliens!” He puffed out his chest, and part of me just  _ knew _ he was reenacting a scene from some shitty sci-fi movie. “What is your business on Earth? Do you come in peace.”

Ram-horns had a grin spend over her face. “Dunno, but we do come in  _ pieces _ !” she shot finger guns at John and I, and then burst into laughter.

Her voice was simultaneously hollow and humorous at the same time. It was admittedly impressive. 

I just stared. John didn't say anything.

She poked the head of Red-skirt. “Hey. Hey, Kanaya, do you get it? Get it? You know, because we crashed?”

‘Kanaya' rolled her eyes dramatically.

Only now, the boy on the ground (Karkat?) Opened his eyes with a tired grunt.

Ram-horns ignored this new development, turning her attention back to the John and I who still stood before her. “I'm just joking, no need to look like you saw a ghost! My name is Aradia. We come in both peace  _ and _ pieces. We don't speak for our Empire, sadly, but that's hardly the point.”

“Yes, the point is,” Kanaya continued for Aradia. “We need a place to stay. To recover and sleep, if only for a few nights. What are your names?”

John stepped forward proudly. “I'm John, and this is Dave! Lucky for you, Dave here has a very empty storage garage right outside his backyard, and you're welcome to stay there!”

“Now, hol-” I began to protest, but John cut me off.

“All I'd like to know is why you're here. You see, Earth has never gotten aliens before, and some people don't even think they're real! So, since this is so new to us, I just want to make sure you guys aren't here for ill intent.”

Karkat grunted again, attempting (and failing) to stand up. “We're fugitives of our empire, dipshit.”

John blinked. “I can't tell if you're joking.”

“He's not, unfortunately,” Kanaya said, “Our empire sentenced most of us to a hive bombing after finding out about some of our ancestories.”

John looked ready to say something else, but I filled in the silence before he could ask more nosy questions. “Cool, extra points for a life of crime. But seriously, we should head back to my house now.”

I became somewhat distracted whatever Kanaya's answer might be, as I noticed that Aradia didn't just seem to be floating she _was_ floating. Just a few inches off the ground, but enough to baffle me.

“Very well,” Kanaya agreed, “We will go to your human house.”

I glanced nervously at the shipwreck. “How many of you are there? That you brought?”

“Twelve.”

“ _ Fan _ -tastic.” My shoulders sunk.

It took a good twenty minutes to get all twelve trolls out of the shipwreck, and I was genuinely surprised by how different they all looked from each other. 

There was a short scrawny boy with bull horns that looked too big for him. A tall boy with sunglasses who looked like he could implode my skull with his bare hands. Aradia, a now gracefully floating girl whose hair flew up spookily, and a tiny girl in green who was bouncing around like a pinball.

But, eventually, we got everybody walking, setting course for my house.

“Some of us need medical attention. The crash was not kind to us.” Kanaya hung her head, looking back to her herd of friends.

“Yeah, I can see that.” John mumbled, probably just noticing that some of the surrounding trolls were limping or clutching gashes on their flesh “You said you were criminals escaping your empress… but you're explanation was vague. Really, what happened?”

Karkat shrugged, pulling his arms closer to his chest. “Lots of things. A whole lot of fucking thinhs. For one, I'm a mutant. Don't give me look, Terezi! Yeah, I said it, I'm a fucking mutant- happy? 

“Point is, being a mutant means I'm already overdue for a culling, not to mention I'm the descendant of one of the biggest traitors in Alternian history. They think I'm going to spread his message, or some shit, but I don't even care! We've got a couple other descendents of legendary traitors and general fucking abominations. And don't even get me started on  _ her _ .”

He pointed to a girl with swim goggles and pink symbol on her shirt, who looked up, startled and upset.

Karkat continued on before he gave the girl a chance to defend herself, he continued on. “Feferi Peixes, the Heiress herself, whose had an unspoken bounty on her head ever since she fucking hatched- and who put it there? Her Imperious Conde-fuckass who can't stomach the thought of ever giving up the damn throne!”

Seemingly, he said this all without taking a single breath, so he began coughing excessively.

Both John and me were sent silent by this insane rant.

The tall troll next to Karkat, who'd been zoned out before, then put a concerned hand on Karkat’s shoulder.

“Karbro,” he prompted, his voice low and comforting, “Calm down. It ain't nobody’s fault but the Empress that all us motherfuckers are on this funky planet. Don't be blaming yourself, Fefsis, or anybody else, mmkay?”

From what I knew about Karkat so far, I completely expected him to go feral on this guy and flip out.

But instead, he seemed to actually calm down. He sighed in defeat- though it was a willing defeat, and leaned back against the tall troll’s arm was still around his shoulder.

“Get a room!!!!!!!!” A girl with a blue ‘m' shaped symbol on her shirt snorted, and several others began snickering.

I wasn't sure why this was funny, or required a room, but Karkat looked more than ready to argue with them. But luckily, he didn't.

“Oh.” John looked more awkward than ever. “Well, who all has injuries? Dave and I have a friend who knows some stuff about first aid, maybe she could help.”

“We're not waking up Jade for this,” I interrupted, “She might call the cops.”

“She won't!” John protested.

“I have the worst migraines I've ever had in my life, and no meds to be found!” A lisped voice announced loudly. The person with these migraines appeared to be another male alien, wearing what looked like 3D glasses.

“Equius hit his head,” a girl with a bright blue hat said. “He might have a concussion, but I don't know how to tell!”

“I cut my arm on some broken glass.” Swim-goggles girl (Fefess? Ferri?) held up her arm which was dripping blood. But the blood… was pink? Maybe it just looked pink in the dark. I certainly didn't know.

Damnit. Jade did know first aid. She'd be the only one who could help.

“We're all really hungry, too,” Aradia sighed tiredly, “Our food ran out a couple days ago.”

Food. That was the biggest ‘yikes' of all. I already had limited food in my house, and there definitely wasn't enough to feed twelve starving aliens- at least, not without my Bro noticing. I would either have to go shopping with our own money, or have to inform Jade of these aliens (neither option sounded appealing).

John looked at me expectantly, probably thinking the same thing as me. 

“No buts or damn argument!” I crossed my arms stubbornly before he could say anything “I'm not texting Jade.”

Needless to say, John took action into his own hands and texted her himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deepest apologies, this is a shorter chapter (or it feels like it to me- my word count has been being a bitch recently).
> 
> I know this is a VeRY quick update, and i just want ya to know that it's because I had half of this chapter pre-written before I even posted Chapter 1. The usual updates probably will take a bit longer.


	4. Blood is Green (don’t worry, it’s supposed to be) - Jade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey ya'll!! I'm back, and this chapter is from our lovely Jade Harley's point of view. I'm so sORRy that I took so long to update, my schedule was a nightmare and I kept playing Minecraft during times I was supposed to be writing. But, now chapter four is here, and my update's probably won't have to be a solid month apart, haha.

I was just arriving home from my midnight shift at Walgreens when I got a text.

In any other circumstances, this wouldn’t have been strange at all, but considering the fact that it was almost 2:30 in the morning, it was rather peculiar.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and though I was tired, and wanting nothing more than to go to sleep after an uneventful shift, I turned it on to see a Pesterchum message from John. I frowned, concerned as to why on earth he was awake at this hour.

\-- ectoBiologist [ EB ] BEGAN PESTERING gardenGnostic [ GG ] at 02:45 --

EB:  hey jade we need your help.

EB:  me and dave, that is. we need you to come to that dumpy shed behind dave’s house, you know the one.

EB:  i know that sounds really ominous but you have to trust me.

EB:  please answer.

GG: john, what’s going on??

EB:  one word;

EB:  aliens.

GG:  john, have you been watching buzzfeed unsolved late at night again? :(

EB:  no!!! it’s true!!

EB:  a group of twelve aliens who i think are about our age, maybe, just crashed in the field by dave and i’s houses! a lot of them are injured from the crash and they all haven’t eaten in days!

EB:  i need you to bring food and a first aid kit.

GG:  i don’t believe you.

EB:  fine then! i’ll just send a picture!

\-- ectoBiologist [ EB ] SENT AN IMAGE --

GG: what the hell.

I stared blankly down at the photo I opened. It was definitely inside Dave’s shed. I could see the ugly maroon couch that sat against the concrete wall. But, there were several unfamiliar people in it.

Dave, in his signature sunglasses, was perched atop the armrest of the couch, next to several strange people sitting in it. He was looking straight at the camera and had his hand up in a lazy peace sign. It was rather obvious that he was the only one aware that John was taking a picture.

As for the unfamiliar people… they were grey. There was no other way of putting it. All the people in the photo, aside from Dave, had solid grey skin, thorny black hair, and distinctive orange horns, which had a red-to-yellow gradient, but were mostly orange. Among the creatures, the horns came in all sorts of odd, very different shapes.

They were wearing mostly black, with the only exceptions seen in the picture being a girl in a bright blue hat and green overcoat, and a boy curled up in a ball on the floor, wrapped in a large purple blanket (or a cape? Maybe?)

GG:  what are those????

GG:  wait no please don't make a joke about that dumb crocs meme.

EB:  wouldn’t dream of it, jade!

EB:  but like seriously you need to come over here right now because i don’t think bright pink blood is normal.

EB:  also what’s a migraine and what you do with it?

EB:  gtg

\-- ectoBiologist [ EB ] CEASED PESTERING gardenGnostic [ GG ] at 02:45 --

I stared down at my phone and gritted my teeth. I had absolutely no idea what hame John was trying to play. But, neither John nor Dave was any good at photoshop, so that picture… Maybe they were telling the truth?

Confusion replaced my annoyance, and curiosity replaced my exhaustion. Even if the aliens were all a con, I was rather curious to know _why_ my friends would play such a con, and _how_ exactly they did it. Real or not, I was unexplainably fascinated.

And hey, if they were telling the truth, aliens were awesome!

I put my phone back into my pocket. Injured and hungry, huh? Well, those were two things that Jade Harley could manage.

Skidding into my closet, I scoured the shelves for my first aid kits. There were two there, surprisingly enough, I decided to pick up both for good measure, as John didn’t mention how many people were injured, but he did mention that there was 12 aliens, blood, and migraines. I made sure to grab some Advil, rubbing alcohol, and some plastic gloves. Grandpa really did have everything, and for once everything was useful. I was even more grateful that Grandpa was a very heavy sleeper, and slept on the opposite side of the house.

I had put a lot of work into moving the large box of granola bars _out_ of my care when I’d gotten home from my shift (my manager told me to take the box home), so it was rather begrudging to move all the granola bars back into my car.

Aside from the granola bars, I grabbed a package of lunch meat and a jug of applesauce.

Pushing my glasses back up my nose, I shut the care door behind me, and set course for Dave’s house (or rather, the storage shed behind Dave’s house).

~o0o~

I wasn't about to carry all the food out of the car in one trip, so I first got out of the car to knock on the shed’s door and check what exactly was going on. In fact, I might need to scold those two boys for playing such an awful trick, in the case that they were joking. Despite not taking the food, I did grab one of my first aid kits, held tightly in one hand. My feet slid out of me seat, hitting the faded pavement of the road. From here, I could see Dave’s house right in front of me, and even the silhouette of John’s off in the distance.

I half-jogged across the field between the road and the shed, my brown skirt whipping against my shins in the nighttime wind. It was cold, which was typical enough for a late October night.

I knocked with the back of my knuckles, to the tune of some non-existent song. There was noise from inside, though it halted at my touch, and there was a silencing shout of “ _It’s probably Jade! It’s fine, it’s okay, I’ll get it!_ ”

The door flew open so fast that it nearly hit me in the face.

It revealed a very frantic, very harried looking John Egbert. His hair was still in an obvious bedhead, and he was wearing pajamas, with a blanket halfheartedly tied around his shoulders.

“Thank _goodness_.” He breathed, his blue eyes darting around in frenzy. “You’re here.”

“I take it that you were telling the truth, then,” I crossed my arms skeptically, “Because you better have been, Johnathan. I’m tired!”

“Okay, I’m sorry I called you here so late,” John tried to explain, “but this is exactly the sorta thing that’s classified as an emergency, no joke! Did you bring the- okay good, that’s a first aid box thing, uh, did you bring food?”

“It’s in my car,” I fill in, “Now, where are the aliens?”

John opened the door wider, and I walked inside without hesitation. I held my first aid kit closer to my chest as a looked around at the inside.

They were definitely the creatures in the picture John sent me. Grey skin, orange horns, black hair and clothes. These creatures ranged in all sorts of ways, and I noticed that while they did wear mostly black, there were some creatures who wore small ‘pops’ of color, the most common color being a very bright red, worn by several other creatures in both shoes and skirts. They were all looking straight at me. Skepticality, fear, hope, and what was just obvious annoyance were on all their faces. John was right there was twelve.

Dave was still sitting in the same spot he was in the photo- perched on top of the armrest of that ugly maroon couch. The corners of his mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile when he saw me, and made finger guns.

“Yeah,” Dave nodded in agreement, though there was nothing to agree to. “Ya’ll, this is my friend Jade Harley, she’s brought the good shit, as in food and bigass stretchy Band-Aids. Jade, this is the troll posse. They’re trolls, they’re a posse, and they’re cool as hell. We found them in a spaceship in a ditch, can we keep them?”

Sitting on the couch next to Dave, a short boy with tiny little nubs for horns practically steamed with anger. “We’re people, not stray purrbeasts, you blethering piss-faced shithole!”

Dave gestured to the shorter alien boy and clapped in on the back as if he were a close friend. “This is Karkat. He’s cool. Pretty loud, though, seriously. Dude, do you think you could use your indoor voice? You’re gonna wake the whole neighborhood, ha.”

“Fuck you and your nay-bore-hood!” Karkat retorted, not lowering his voice at all.

I smiled, almost not paying attention as I looked around at all the aliens. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet all of you! I’ll try to help out as much as I can.” I hoisted my first aid kit higher into my arms, ready to open in up and start cleaning up this apparently oddly colored blood.

There was a general murmur, though there wasn’t quite a straight response.

But before I could say anything else, I was a moment away from screaming in terror when I felt a bony hand clasp onto my ankle.

Frozen in fear, I turned my head down to see what had grabbed me.

It was another one of the trolls. This one was another male, staring up at me, looking completely agonized. He groaned like a dying animal, put a shaky arm over his face, and rolled over. “Fucking ow.”

I was more concerned than scared at this point, but equally as confused. “Um… I began nervously, looking to the other trolls for support. “Is he, like, okay?”

“Oh, don’t worry, that’s just Sollux.” Karkat filled in, waving his hand dismissively. “He’s being obnoxious by pretending that he’s just going to _die_ from his sad little _headache_ , and goddamnit, it’s not like we don’t _know_ about his fucking whining because it’s not like he hasn’t being _whimpering_ like a _wounded wrigger_ for _SEVEN. FUCKING. DAYS_.”

Sollux groaned again, and displayed his middle finger in Karkat’s general direction.

After that rant, only one word showed clearly in my mind; _Yikes_.

I crouched down next to Sollux, whose face was squished against the floor. Scared to irritate him, I nervously poked him in the neck. “Hey, you’ve got a headache? I’ve got some ibuprofen, that’ll help numb the pain alright.”

Sollux looked up, revealing a rather frightening pair of eyes. His left eye was solid red, and right eye was solid blue, with no hint of a pupil at all. “Give me the painkillers. Please.” He spoke with a rather defined lisp, now that I noticed it.

“Are his eyes _supposed_ to be like that?” I asked loudly, letting the nervousness show in my voice.

“Yes.” One of the girls answered, the one with a red symbol on her shirt, “He’s a psionic.”

“Painkillers.” Sollux repeated.

I hummed, finally opening the first aid kit, and finding the small container of ibuprofen. “When was the last time you ate? You can only take the pills after you’ve eaten something, or else you could get a stomach ache. So, have you eaten recently?”

There was a pause, and then Sollux began to wail as if it was the end of the world.

“I’ll take that as a no.” I scratched the back of my neck, embarrassed. Several trolls around Sollux were rolling their eyes. “Hey, it’s okay! I brought food with me we can go get it, and then you can take some medicine, okay?” I looked over at Dave on the couch. “Hey, Dave, why don’t you go to my car and grab the food out of the backseat. There’s some granola bars, lunch meat and applesauce. Got it?”

“I gotchu.” Dave gave me a thumbs up.

So, I hurled my car keys at Dave, which hit him square in the face, making him fall off balance, and ultimately causing him to topple off of the couch and onto the floor. It wasn’t even a second before John doubled over with laughter.

“Graceful, Strider. Like a true ballerina.” John clapped slowly.

Dave sprawled out dramatically before getting back up and taking a bow. “Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all night.”

Eventually, he picked back up my keys and jogged out the door into the October night.

When he was gone, I looked around of the trolls again. “John told me that some of you were injured. I can help! I know first aid and I can patch anyone up who needs it, but I’m no doctor, I’m a high school student who works at Walgreens, but it’s better than nothing, I guess. So whose hurt?”

Several hands shot up. A boy wrapped in a violet cape, a girl with an long red skirt clutching her midsection, a girl wearing a tank top with a pink symbol, and a boy with bull horns hugging his knee to his chest.

I pointed at the girl in the red skirt. “You, what’s your name?”

“Kanaya.” She answered, getting up from the floor to walk over to me. “Something speared me in the crash.” She lifted her hand to show a circular wound where her stomach might be, though it was bleeding _green blood._ Her blood was _green_. “It is not too deep of a cut but it will not stop bleeding.”

I put my hands together, shocked. “Your blood is green.” I said weakly.

“In fact it is,” Kanaya nodded, looking down at it. “Are jade-bloods rare on your planet as well?”

I shook my head slowly. “Uhh… no. We actually… We all have red blood. All of us. Red is the only blood color, here on Earth.”

Many head perked up, expressions ranging from delighted to disgusted. The boy in the violet cape looked absolutely flabbergasted. “What?! How does your ranking system work, then? Who knows who’s above who? Why are all of you red-bloods?”

“That sounds grand!” Says the hollow-voiced girl again, “You’re all rusties, just like me.”

I turned back to Kanaya, snapping out of my shock of her blood color. “Alright, Kanaya. Why don't you lay down and we can work on getting that cut all cleaned up?”

So she did just that. I rolled up her shirt and stopped the bleeding, disinfected the wound, and held it together with a bit of medical superglue (Kanaya was very concerned about using that) before bandaging all around her midsection.

After finishing patching up Kanaya, I moved on to fixing more people, and I learned many more names. Equius, an intimidatingly muscular troll had gotten a very mild concussion, and a sore neck all from hitting his head. Feferi, whom apparently was a princess, or some kind of troll royalty, had a huge gash all across her forearm I had to tightly bandage (Her blood was fuschia. She later complained about her hand losing circulation). Soon after, Dave arrived with all of the food in tow. Of course, we warned the trolls that we didn’t bring spoons, so they’d have to eat the applesauce with their hands. Most of them didn’t seem to mind. As soon as everyone got a little food in them, Sollux was able to take some painkillers, as well as some other trolls who had gotten very bruised in crash, namely Nepeta, Eridan, and Terezi. I was beginning to notice a pattern that all of the trolls’ names had 6 letters.

The mood of the shed had improved greatly, and everyone was talking amongst themselves more comfortably, now. The trolls explained to a bit about their planet, and why they left, (truly, it was a tragic story). Two other trolls, Vriska and Gamzee, had gotten in a argument over who got to eat the last slice of lunch meat--watching the argument was like watching a tennis match, but ended with Kanaya ripping the last slice of meat in half. The other two trolls ate their respective halves begrudgingly.

“Is that everyone?” I asked, looking around in excitement. “Any more injuries?”

One troll raised his hand. It was the boy with bull horns, who I’d briefly glanced over earlier. He was sitting on the floor, with his arms wrapped around himself

“Okie dokie, what’s the issue?” I smiled warmly, since he looked rather nervous.

His shoulders hunched, and he pointed to his knee. “Well, this, obviously,” he mumbled.

My smile was more strained. I had avoided looking at this particular injury, knowing that I would have to expect the worst. This boy’s knee was completely mangled, dripping with orangish-brown blood down his leg, and pooling on the floor. Unfortunately, my worries were correct, as I could see that there appeared to be something stuck in his knee. Something metal, and probably very painful.

I bit the inside of my cheek, unsure how to kindly say ‘ _Your entire leg is absolutely done for if you don’t get surgery soon, and there’s no way for me to fix it! The wound is likely infected, might make you sick, and_ will _cause you an indefinite amount of pain!_ ”

So, instead, I clear my throat awkwardly. “What’s your name?”

“Tavros.”

“Well, Tavros, I’m not sure what to tell you, other than the fact that _I_ can’t help you. Ideally, we would take you to a hospital, but we obviously can’t, so our second best option is to take you to our friend Rose’s mom, Ms Lalonde. I’d tell your to put pressure on the wound, but that would probably make it worse. I really am sorry, though.”

Tavros looked rather horrified at this answer. He blinked several times, before very quietly replying, “What’s a hospital?”

I turned away from him to look at John and Dave, who seemed equally freaked out as I was.

The next half hour went by rather quickly. Even though I couldn’t remove the shrapnel from Tavros’ knee, I was able to clean it up,and lightly bandage it so that this would bleed out everywhere.

Soon after, John decided that he should go home, and Dave and I both agreed that it was time we _all_ went to sleep, considering that it was now past 4:00 in the morning, and we had school tomorrow (I already accepted that I’d be tired). We explained to the trolls that we had to go back to our houses and sleep. They were rather confused at why we were sleeping at night, and we discovered that trolls were nocturnal- who could’ve guessed? I assured them that I would come by tomorrow after school with more food (we also had to explain what school was), and maybe  I’d even bring an extra friend along.

After all, I was a part of a four-person friend group, and you can’t just keep a secret without letting Rose Mary Lalonde in on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get it. "Rose Mary Lalonde" Rose Mary. Rosemary. Yes, I'm so very hilarious, but Mary is my actual middle name headcannon for Rose.


	5. Trust me, I’m not a doctor - John

The night we found the trolls was technically a Thursday, because it was after midnight, but it felt more correct to call it Wednesday night. Unsurprising to me, I walked into school on Thursday morning as the living, breathing definition of “tired-stupid.” It was easy enough for me to understand why, since I knew perfectly well that I had woke up at around midnight and stayed up for hours, until I went back to my house to sleep at almost 5 in the morning. Adding that all up meant that I got roughly 3 hours of sleep.

And of course, I couldn’t explain any of that to my dad. He was probably very confused as to why me, his son had exhausted madness in my eyes, and seemed to be unnervingly excited to be going to school today.

So as I stumbled off the bus with Dave at my side, since we shared a bus stop, my throat with filled with laughter. I probably looked like an absolute psycho to my other classmates. Somehow, Dave was retaining his Relaxed Cool Kid Look™ but that may have just been because his dark sunglasses hid any and all emotion.

The first half of the day was pretty much a blur. I had a difficult enough time paying attention in class normally, and now that I was surviving off of 3 hours of sleep and day-old Starbucks energy drinks, me attention span was even worse. I didn’t even have anyone to talk to, since all my classes with my friends where in the second half of the day, after lunch. For the time being, I was stuck waiting, anticipating the moment I'd be able to tell Rose about the trolls. 

But, as hours passed, we reached lunch to which I sprinted to my locker to get my lunch, and ran all the way to the lunchroom.

My eyes landed on our table. The Unstable Table, as I had named it in freshman year, for geeks, losers, and goths with no friends. Soon, I walked over to the table as unsuspiciously as possible, not wanting to start a scene, since I was about to go into a full length rant about the existence of aliens.

I slammed my lunchbox down on the circular table, taking my ordinary seat. The lunch table we sat at was right by the wall of the cafeteria, on the opposite side to where the lunch-line is.

Rose looked like she put on makeup a few days ago, slept in it, and only reapplied her lipstick (and nothing else) this morning.

“Hey nerd!” I greeted her with a toothy grin.

“No offence, John, but you look absolutely awful.” She tilted her head in concern as she bit into her gluten-free sandwich.

“I know!” I replied gleefully.

“Didn't you sleep at all last night?” There was a look of concern on her face, but a generic one. It wasn't exactly ultra rare for me to show up to school sleep deprived.

“Nope.”

Rose’s purple eyes, surrounded by smudged eyeliner, darted to the cafeteria door, watching the inpour of students walking inside. “Well,” her shoulders pulled up in a frozen shrug, “I'm amazed to say that all three of my different teachers this morning told me that my skirt was too short, and my black tights were ‘distracting.’ Dress code is awful. And news from you?”

“Aw, yeah dress code sucks.” I agreed. “I don't have any, school related news? But I sure have news!”

“Let's hear it, then.”

I looked over to the door. Still no sign of my other friends. I was reluctant to tell Rose about the said news without. “Um, I want to wait until Dave and Jade get here. It's, like, _really_ big news and we all want to tell you.”

She raised an arched eyebrow, but half smiled. “Oh, is there some secret that you're all in on but me?” she joked.

“No, no, no, don't worry,” I excused as quick as I can. “Us three only found out yesterday and we _knew_ that it'd be super duper unfair not to tell you. I just wanna wait for them.”

“Chill out, Jonathan.” Rose smiled. “It was a joke. I figured it was something like that.”

Johnathan isn't my real name. She knows that's not my real name. But calling each other by fake, extended versions of our actual names was something of a running joke. ‘Johnathan,’ ‘Rosilie,’ ‘David,’ and of course, ‘Jadathan,’ because we couldn't come up with anything for Jade that was even remotely clever.

My train of thought reminiscing our friend group’s stupid nicknames what cut off short by a loud squeaking of rubber wheels on the cafeteria floor.

“Ah, there he is.” Rose didn't even look up from her food.

Sure enough, Dave came rolling across the cafeteria on his heelys. He was holding a school lunch tray in his hands with nothing on it except for a carton of apple juice, a singular grape, and four bags of Doritos. His face; neutral as ever. He made a half-hearted finger gun whenever someone would greet him with a casual “ _Hey Dave_ ,” and his lunch tray nearly toppled over twice.

In some circumstances, Dave may have been considered popular, if everyone in school didn't know that he was a huge nerd that wrote and drew a purposefully bad webcomic ‘for the ironies’. Really, he was just a fake cool kid who wanted attention. Hey, we love him anyway.

He and his heelys came squeaking to a stop when he reached his chair at our table.

“Sup.” he dropped his lunch tray on the table, sending the singular grape flying onto the floor. “Lemme guess, we're waiting on Jade.”

“That's right,” Rose nodded, “Now, I assume that you want us to donate our dairy products to you… again.”

“Hell yeah!”

I sighed, and peeled the cheese slice off of my sandwich and set it on his tray, and Rose tossed him a bag of Goldfish from her lunch. 

Dave, unsurprisingly, was lactose intolerant. He had a doctor’s note saying that he was only for the reason of getting apple juice from the back room instead of drinking milk like everyone else. As for all other aspects of his allergy, he completely ignored them, and ate cheese like it was the end of the world.

“So,” Dave said through a mouthful of cheese, “Do any of y’all know what Jade’s schedule? Maybe why she's taking so long?”

I scrunched up my face, trying to remember. “I think that she either had Spanish or science last. It started with an _S_.”

“By that logic it could also be social studies.” Rose added, “Whatever it is you three are wanting to tell me better be good, as I'm quite curious about it. I don't want to wait all lunch for Jade to get here, unless she had information unique to her, perhaps.”

“No worries,” Dave was craning his neck to get a better look across the cafeteria. “She's here.”

Rose and I turned to look where Dave was looking to see Jade, holding roughly five books in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other, power walking towards us at an impressive speed. She walked alongside and against the wall of the room, and got to the table.

Jade looked down at Rose. “Does she know?”

“Good afternoon to you too.” Dave commented before chugging the entirety of his apple juice carton.

“Not yet, we wanted to wait for you!” I grinned at Jade. Now that she was here, I was delighted to tell Rose about our revolutionary discovery.

Rose looked between her three friends sitting in front of her.

A smile split her face, her chin resting on her hand propped up on the table. “Well, we're all here, aren't we? Why don't you three just tell this special secret already?”

Me, Dave, and Jade exchanged a Look™.

“It's aliens.” I exclaimed finally, breaking the awkwardly strained silence. “Dave woke me up in the middle of the night last night-”

“Because _I_ thought that I saw a meteor or spaceship crash from the sky! I thought somebody shot a fucking gun outside, because it was so loud. So we went out to go check it out-”

“And it turns out it was aliens! They had this bright red ship and it was super cool, but the twelve aliens in the crash were all, like, teenagers!!”

“And a bunch of them were hurt.”

“They're called trolls and their blood was all different colors like green and pink, and I think that's how their social classing system works, but that's a whole different can of beans.”

“So we put them in the shed behind Dave’s house because they needed shelter.”

Jade interrupted me and Dave finishing each other's sentences. “So then John texted me, because they needed food and medical attention, so I came and did that and was like ‘yup those are aliens!’”

“So now here we.” I finished, taking in a breath from talking so fast.

Rose blinked very slowly. There was another break for awkward silence. “I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't that.” She chuckled. “But, okay.”

“You…” Jade stared at Rose, incredulous and a bit confused. “You believe us?”

“Yes,” Rose answered, with a sort of sparkle in her eye, “I have every reason to, do I not? I have known you three since I moved here in sixth grade, and though some of you play pranks, you have a ‘confuse, don't abuse’ policy, and you aren't liars. Least of all you wouldn't lie to your friend about something this serious. Also, you don't have any other friends, so you can't afford to lie to me.”

“Aww, come on,” Dave protested, “I have other friends.”

“Name one, David. Name one other friend you have.”

Dave’s brow furrowed, trying to think of someone. “Uh, James Mathews. He sits next to me in math class.”

“Oh, _please_ ,” Rose teased, “He's not your friend, he's someone who you talk to occasionally and will do group projects with if you have no other choice.”

“Touché.”

“But whoa, seriously? You don't think we're crazy?” I asked.

“Not at all.” Rose confirmed. Though she could be cold and a little mean, she wore a kind, comforting expression. “Do you think I could meet them? I think it would be an absolutely fascinating experience.”

“You're taking this surprisingly well,” I muttered under my breath.

“Of course you can meet them!” Jade gave her two thumbs up, “Even just after school today. But…” she gritted her teeth. “We need you to bring your mom with you to see them.”

Okay, _that_ must have been confusing to Rose. “My mother? Why?”

“Well, like I said, they needed medical attention. Some of it's, like, really serious. There's this kid whose had really bad migraines and a fever for a whole week. There’s this boy with a piece of shrapnel stuck in his knee and could really only get it out with surgery and well? I'm not a surgeon.”

“Alright, I'm sure she wouldn't mind taking care of that. That does sound critical. My mother isn't exactly a surgeon either, but she’s our closest bet, and I understand why you can't take them to a hospital.” Rose looked down at the ground with a tilted head, deep in thought.

“Okay, thank goodness,” Jade replied, “That’s a big worry lifted off my shoulders. Now, I’ve done some pretty interesting research, and I’d like to share my pretty interesting findings! As well as some… possibly bad news.”

She pushed forward the stack of books she’d been holding, which I now noticed had multiple magazines. The magazines all had titles similar to ‘ _They Walk Among Us,_ ’ ‘ _Extra Terrestrials Today,_ ’ and ‘ _Visitors from the Stars._ ’ I knew what these magazines were, because 13-year-old, seventh grade me had been obsessed with them. They were full of fake pictures and articles written by crazies and paranoid people and government conspiracy theorists. Most certainly, these weren’t going to help us at all.

“Jade,” I grimaced looking over at her, “These magazines, they’re-”

“Useless. I know. I checked, and the only _mention_ of trolls was in some B.S. theory about Betty Crocker or something. That’s not what’s really important, look at this!”

From the stack, Jade pulled out another thing. A newspaper.

Upon closer inspection, I found that the newspaper, artfully placed on top of the stack, was in fact today’s newspaper. There was a blurry, difficult to interpret picture on the front of a night sky with a shaky, blurry clump of colors. Another picture next to the first was of an uncomfortable looking man standing in front of a house, probably taken during the news report. The headline was very blatant, reading in bolded letters, “ **_UNEXPECTED METEOR SHOWER OR_ ** **NASA** **_PROJECT FAILURE?_ **”

My heart skipped a beat. I snatched the paper away from Jade’s pile, so I could read the small print better. Even with my glasses on, my whole vision felt like it was going fuzzy. Dave skidded out of his chair to read over my shoulder. My breath quickening, I just stared at the headline, which only stared back at me.

“Shit.” I whispered.

“We worked fast but the news works faster,” Jade crossed her arms with a disappointed ‘ _hmph._ ’

“It was a pretty damn loud explosion,” Dave chimed, “I mean it not like I’m the only light sleeper in all of Washington state. I can imagine the future headlines! Four dumbasses hide some rad fucking aliens in their shed and oh shit! The government is invading our house and next thing we know, the Troll Posse is on their way to Area 51.”

“Now, now, David, no need to resort to unreasonable pessimism,” Rose patted him on the back twice. “Jade, is this article really something we should be worried about. Is aliens, as an explanation, seriously being considered by the news?”

“It’s not that bad,” Jade explained with a sigh. “But seriously, we have to be careful, and we _have_ to move the trolls to a safe place.”

**~o0o~**

According to Rose over text, explaining to her mother that aliens were real and that she was going to have to house them and treat their injuries was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Not because it was scary or embarrassing to say, but because Rose knew her mother would believe it without batting an eye, exasperated as she might be.

So when we saw Dr. Lalonde’s hot pink car pull up to that road behind Dave’s house, we just _knew_ we were in for a treat.

Rose got out of the car _way_ too fast, like she didn’t want to be seen with her mother or that eyesore of a car.

Rose’s mom got out maybe five seconds later, looking around at the rather boring landscape around her. Though I didn’t see her often, I recognized her immediately when I saw her. She looked young to be a mother, and shared Rose’s light blonde hair, and tanned skin. One thing she did not share with Rose, though, was her fashion sense. Seeing the two together was as if a pink sugar-fairy-princess had a daughter who was just Morticia Adamms.

Rose began walking towards the shed, only stepping on her tip-toes to avoid the scratchy, probably cricket-infested grass.

“Hurry up!” I heard Rose call to her mother.

“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying, the shed isn’t _going_ anywhere!” she shouted back.

Jade waved vigorously to them, and I heard an irritated, Karkat-sounding yell from inside of the shed. “That _better_ be them. Are they here _NOW_ ?” I wrung my hands, hoping that none of the trolls would be rude enough to make Rose’s mom _not_ want to help them. I wouldn’t know what to do in that situation.

When the two Lalondes reached the shed, Rose’s mom grinned, waving to us three. “Rose here told me something about aliens? Should’ve I brought a tin foil hat so they can’t mind control me?” She laughed jokingly, though we all tried to laugh back, though it was nervous, and forced.

A _Terezi_ -sounding yell from inside. “Hey Vriska, I think they’re talking about you!” which was followed by a prompt, _"_ _Shut the fuck up!!!!!!!!”_ and a loud smacking noise.

“Uhm,” Jade said awkwardly, “That’s the aliens. Sorry, they’re a bit… nervous.”

“Oh, it’s fine, Jade!” Rose’s mom had a puzzled expression on her face, looking around the group of children at the shed, and the commotion coming from it. “Christ, I’m too sober for this,” she muttered under her breath before clearing her throat and smiling again, this time directed at Dave. “Dave, hon, is your brother okay with this? Can I talk to him at all?”

Dave shook his head. “Sorry, no, but he won’t care anyway. Bro doesn’t know about the aliens. Only us four, and now you, I guess. Bro’s not even home.”

“Where is he?”

“Work.” Dave shrugged. “Or Burger King. I don’t really know where he goes in his free time and I don’t bother to ask.”

She nodded, wisely choosing not to question Dave’s questionable home life, or relationship with his guardian. It was a whole nother can of beans that none of us really wanted to get into.

“Let’s get on with this,” Rose interrupted, “I want to meet these aliens too!”

“Alright, geez.” I backed up to the shed and opened the door, walking inside with my train of friends in tow. 

In only, like, 12 hours of not seeing them, the troll had only gotten worse. They were all incredibly cramped in the shed. From the story that Kanaya had told us before Rose and her mom arrived, everyone had been fighting. This left some serious dents in the trolls’ current ability to stand being around each other.

Most of it was fighting over the couch. This included, but wasn’t limited to; Eridan declaring himself and Feferi the only trolls worthy of sitting on the couch since they were royalty, which resulting in a fistfight between Eridan and Vriska, and ended after Aradia hit both of them against the ceiling with her telekinesis. I have idea how they didn’t get the attention of everyone in Washington and their mother. But, once the sun came up, everyone had fallen asleep, on and under the couch, and all over the floor. So we had to wake them up, which only made them more irritated.

Rose’s mom stared at the grey aliens all around her. She look shocked, yet, calm.

Many of the trolls had caught her gaze, looking past Rose and straight at her mother, with a strange sort of mortification in their faces once they saw her.

Kanaya stood up suddenly, as she was sitting on the floor right next to where I stood. “You didn’t tell us you were bringing an adult!” She hissed into my ear, “What if she tells the government? What if she just kills us? She’s wearing a lot of _pink_. How can we trust her?”

“Hey, don’t freak out,” I reassured her, “Rose’s mom is totally cool, and she hates the government more than anyone.”

Kanaya didn’t seem convinced. I wondered why she seemed to spooked at Rxy being an adult.

“Well, thank you so much for coming on, um, short notice? Thanks, Miss- Dr. Lalonde,” I thanked profusely, scratching the back of my neck, somewhat bashful.

“Oh, no Miss or Dr. for you, kid,” Rose’s mom smiled, nudging my arm in a friendly sort of way. “You all can just call me Roxy. Don’t worry yourself, I’ve got this situation covered! Aliens isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve seen in my scientific career.” She looked around among the trolls, whom I noticed seemed to shrivel in fear at her gaze. “Now who’s these ‘critical condition’ alien pals?”

The was a whole lot of timid, incoherent mumbling and vague pointing at Sollux and Tavros.

She knelt down at Sollux, who was laying on the floor, trambling like a maniac as intangible sparks flew blue and red from his eyes. Roxy extended a hand to rest on his shoulder, which tensed up the instant she touched it.

“That’s Sollux,” I explained, proud that I’d learned many of the trolls’ names.

“Aw, poor kid,” Roxy murmured, “He looks sick, what the hel- heck happened?”

Feferi was the first to answer, as she was sitting on the floor right next to Sollux, watching over him. “He porpoisefully plugged himshellf into our escape pod when our it ran low on fuel. He powered it with his psionics enough to last a couple weeks, but only lasted a day before getting these _reel_ ly bad migraines and fever. His body temperature dropped a lot. Over the days he _sea_ med to be getting better! But then we crashed, and I think that might’ve made it worse. He was able to walk all the way here, but now he can barely speak, and dolphinitely not move.” Feferi looked down at him pityingly. “Poor thing…” 

“I think I can take care of the migraine part,” Roxy confirmed, “Also making sure that his body temperature stays… correct. I don’t know how to phrase that.”

Feferi hoisted Sollux up into her arms so that she were cradling him. “Promise that he’ll be okay with you?”

“I promise, sweet pea,”

She then turned back to where the other trolls where clustered, many of whom were rolling their eyes or looking severely grossed out. Karkat was one of them, sitting on the floor, nearest to where I stood now. I heard him mutter, “ _Ho-_ ly fuck, keep your grossly sappy flushed affection away from me and my bitter cynisism!” to which I had to strain myself from laughing, or saying something like ‘ _god, mood_.’ Though, I did notice how Sollux seemed to relax when Feferi was holding him.

“Now, who else was in ‘critical’ condition?” Roxy asked.

Tavros rose his hand hesitantly.

“And that’s Tavros,” I introduced quickly, looking back to see Roxy’s reaction.

Roxy’s joyful expression dropped, along with her phone, which I now noticed she’d been holding. It hit the ground with a clatter. She picked it back up mindlessly. “Oh my god.” She reacted,quickly, skidding across the floor, the trolls getting out of her way as she hurried past, sitting down in front of Tavros. “Oh god, tell me your blood _is_ supposed to be brown.”

Tavros frowned. “It is? I’m a bronzeblood? I think it’s, uh, a bigger deal that it's outside of my body rather than what color it is.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not gonna help him just because he’s a lowblood,” Aradia, who was sitting next to her injured friend, glared at Roxy with the intensity of a million suns.

“Oh no, of course I’m still helping him!” Roxy shook her head her eyes wide in horror. “I was just worried that- Nevermind. Thank god you kids called me sooner than later. This could get infected, this, _this_!” She took a deep breath. “You definitely need help.”

“Uh huh.” Tavros nodded, staring at the ground.

“Come on, I already told you!” Vriska complained loudly. “It’s not even that big of a deal! He’s just being a wuss saying he wants to keep all his limbs _intact_ or whatever. If this whole wound bloodstream _infection_ thing is just _so bad_ ,” Vriska made huge air quotes on ‘infection’. “Then why not just chop off the leg and get a new robot one!”

“Come on, I already told you,” Karkat shot back, poorly mocking Vriska’s voice. “You can’t act like you know _everything_ about this, just because Terezi cut off your arm for being an entitled, trash-brained, arrogant excuse for a troll. Some trolls, infact, want to fucking keep the limbs they ALREAY FUCKING OWN!”

“I second that,” Tavros agreed with Karkat, “But, can you guys, uh, stop arguing. Again.”

“‘Got into an argument with Vriska’ and ‘Oddly specific insult’,” Terezi narrated, “Everybody tick off those two squares on Karkat Tantrum Bingo!”

Everyone laughed at this joke, but it seemed to put Karkat into a fouler mood.

“Jade, you still wanna be a doctor when you grow up?” Roxy asked, looking over at Jade, whose face lit up. “How would you like some hands on experience?”

“I think it’d be totally awesome!!” Jade jumped up from her seat, walking towards Roxy.

“Well then, you come over here and help me and Rose get these kids out the door. If you could call your grandpa and ask him if you can stay at Rose’s for dinner, you can watch the surgery, and help me a bit with it. How’s that sound?”

“Great!”

Roxy then turned to a still rather nervous looking Tavros. “Are you okay with Jade here helping out, even if she’s not a surgeon?”

Tavros grimaced, hunching his shoulders. “I, uh, really hate to be all ‘wow I’m an alien,’ or anything, but, I honestly don’t know what a surgeon is. But my knee really hurts, and I don’t exactly have unlimited blood, and if she can help fix that then I’d really appreciate it.”

“Okay, great! Jade, you’re helping.”

Roxy then stood up and looked out among all the other trolls. “I wish I had the time to meet all of you right now, but this shit’s- I mean, this _crap’s_ pretty urgent. But, I’m sure that I’ll be able to get to know all of you later.” She looked over at her daughter.

Rose, however, seemed to be deeply engaged in a conversation with Kanaya and Dave.

“Rosey, sweetie, help out Jade carry Tavros here. I’ll get Sollux.” Roxy told her daughter, who begrudging stood up to go help her mother.

Dave and I sort of just watched uselessly as Rose and Jade put Tavros’ arms around their necks to carry him to the door, and as Roxy effortlessly picked up Sollux. “Alright, let’s get going. This kid, is like, really light.”

“Yeah, he survives off of chips and raw caffeine.” Aradia said blandly.

Roxy didn’t take note of Aradia’s comment, and began walking back out of the shed. Rose and Jade followed her, significantly slower.

But instead of continuing to walk, Roxy jumped in surprise, as there was someone standing in the doorway, blocking her path.

It was Gamzee. Perhaps Roxy had been intimidated, which she had every right to be, since Gamzee had to be a good half a foot taller than her, with fading clown makeup smeared over his face, and he was staring down her with a chilling look of suspicion.

Roxy laughed, the obvious nervousness in her voice showing through. “Ah, sorry kiddo, I gotta get through the door…” Her voice trailed off.

Gamzee’s eyes narrowed, as they flicked down Sollux, lying prone in Roxy’s arms, and then to Tavros, hanging limply from Jade and Rose holding him from each arm. “These two of my motherfucking friends are gon’ be okay, right?” Gamzee snarled, revealing a row of sharp teeth; _intimidatingly_ sharp.

Roxy managed a smile. “Well, of _course_ they are!”

“You gon’ do any crazy motherfucking limb slicing or weirdo brain machines?”

“No, that… won’t be necessecar- nesar-” Roxy cleared her throat loudly. “It’s not needed, is what I meant, heh.”

“It won’t hurt them? Not one motherfucking bit?”

“No, it won’t.”

A pause. Gamzee slowly began to shake his head. “I don't believe you.”

Even with his answer, Gamzee stepped out of Roxy’s way, leaving the doorway unoccupied once again. Roxy let out a deep exhale, like she'd been holding her breath during the interaction. Rose and Jade just looked plain confused, watching this troll- this tall, juggalo troll that looked like he’d been sniffing glue for years, and as he walked back towards the others.

Tavros turned around, following him with his eyes. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.

“You boys keep everything in order, okay?” Roxy called to me and Dave. “No crazy parties before I can get back to you guys tomorrow.”

“Hey, no promises,” Dave joked, with a goodbye wave to his friends.

I stayed silent as I watched the group walk out of the door, and I wrapped my arms around myself. Maybe it was just the exhaustion or the aliens or the general existential dread most all high schoolers feel, but there was an impending sense of doomI felt.

Or maybe I’m overthinking. Jade’s right, I really ought to stop staying up late watching Buzzfeed Unsolved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway uhhhhhhhhhhh i accidentally wrote over 4000 words for one chapter whoops. enjoy.
> 
> also, who wants to play a fun game called 'catch the foreshadowing' (hint: dave said it).


	6. Not Liking These Human Folks - Karkat

It was one day after that human woman, Roxy, took away Sollux and Tavros. Though I had trouble sleeping on the night they left, on the human ‘Friday’ night, I fell asleep faster than usual. A serious worry had been taken off this leader’s shoulders, knowing that those two would be getting whatever medical help they needed. Plus, it was nice knowing I wouldn’t have to put up with Sollux’s whining for a few days.

But even as I fell asleep, I woke up a second later.

I stood in a grey expanse of nothingness. It wasn’t bright, or dark, or even dim. It just was. I tilted my head to look down at myself, and I could see my own reflection in the grey ground. I was wearing the same clothes I went to sleep in, though notably less tattered.

I took a step forward, and as my bare feet hit the ground, it rippled beneath me, like I was standing in an enormous puddle. It didn’t feel like water- it didn’t feel wet, for that matter.

A _dream_. This was a dream. I hummed in fascination, turning around to look all around me. I hadn’t had a lucid dream for as long as I could remember. A dream where I knew it wasn’t real, but I control myself. A dream that made just a little bit more sense that any ordinary dream. They were still strange of course, because my subconscious is a weird guy.

**_Karkat_** _**.** _

My mood changed instantly, whipping around to try to see who spoke. “Who’s there?!” I demanded.

**_I wish I could’ve spoken to you sooner, but the time hasn’t been right until now._ **

“Who the- _where_ the hell are you?!” I cried. “What's going on?!”

**_One cannot see that which lies within your own mind._ **

I stomped my foot on the ground, sending more ripples through the blank place. “Oh, great. There’s a voice in my head and it’s super fucking cryptic. Whoopee for me, now watch as I carve off my own ears.”

That voice, that deep, echoing voice, laughed softly. My shoulders relaxed. I didn’t feel quite as tense anymore, for whatever reason. It sounded like a man speaking, though I’d never heard a grown man speak with such calm content. That voice… it was calming, somehow. It reminded me of Kanaya, of my lusus when I was little, and even of the way Roxy spoke to the injured trolls today.

I stiffened. If there’s one thing you learn on Alternia, it’s to never trust anyone you don’t know. “Alright, Mister Cryptic Wiseguy, well played. Now, who are you?”

**_Do you want to know my name, or what they call me?_ **

“There’s no difference.” I grumbled, stubborn.

**_A name is different from a title, child. Do you believe that your empress was born with the name ‘Her Imperious Condescension’?_ **

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” I responded with a shrug. Being bored with standing in the empty space I was in, I picked a direction and began to walk. “She’s already a snobby bitch, and also, like, a million sweeps old. No one could stop her from acting so vain, but… I guess I just assumed…” I shook my head rapidly, snapping out of my off-topic thoughts. “Okay, fine, I’ll play along with your rules. Which would I recognize better, the title or the name?”

**_The title, most likely, though I have many of them. To most, I am but a martyr lost to history, dying for a cause that would never win._ **

“Good to know you’re just _freakishly_ humble.” I said coolly.

**_Your leaders. Your empress and your warlords, wish to only remember me as an mutated heretic, whose lessons are lost to time, or have lost their meaning over time. But others know me by a differed title. The Signless._ **

I could feel my own thinkpan short-circuit as I went silent with confusion and shock.

“You’re- you’re-” I couldn’t form words. I’d stopped in my tracks. “You’re the Signlesss? But no, no no no, that can’t be. Your followers, those, those _cave_ trolls, they gave me my sign. They gave me my lusus, because they, but they thought…” My voice trailed off. It sounded stupid when I said it out loud.

**_Because they thought you were my descendant?_ **

“Yeah.”

**_Well, they were right._ **

My hands clenched into firsts. “Oh, no, you are _not_ my ancestor, and you know why? Because ancestors and descendants don’t- I mean, they _exist_ , because we have to come from somewhere, but it all gets mixed up in the slurry! There’s literally no way to track it, and there’s no such thing as some fancy goddamn connection between them! It was just something highbloods made up to be special, and to inherit fancy weapons for no reason.”

**_There may be no way to track it, but it exists, child._ **

And then, there was silence. The whole dreamscape became still, and I didn’t move a muscle. It was like a staring contest, though there was no one to stare at, unless I was somehow staring at an invisible man inside my head.

I heard a small _plink_ noise from my left. And I turned to see that was looked like a tiny raindrop fell from the sky.

Suddenly, another drop fell, and another, and soon it was like it was raining lightly all around me.

This was confusing and a bit frightening, because the rain on Alternia was acidic, though that rain never fell on me. Like I stood in a circle where no rain could fall, protected from all outside of this intangible bubble.

The strange, watery ground began to drain away as the rain hit it. And because the ground drained away, I was slowly lowered onto a deeper ground, that I couldn’t see yet.

**_Let me show you something._ **

The rest of the ground sank away all at once, sending me falling into an empty void of darkness. My vision was enveloped in the darkness, and I felt my whole body go numb. The only response I had time to say was a terrified shriek as I fell.

I think I stopped falling somewhere along the way, but I could see anything to tell.

But in the darkness, my entire field of vision was consumed by a painstakingly bright image that seemed to consume my eyes and all of my mind.

It was scenery on Alternia, on one of its brighter nights. Though, it wasn’t viewed as if I were standing, looking at it. It was shot like a movie. The scenery displayed a desert, or a field of rather bland dirt. It was a dark red color, much in contrast with the deep violet sky and bright moonlight. There was soft reflection of the light off of a nearby stream. The sand shifted gently, though I couldn’t feel any wind at all. Hell, I couldn’t feel anything, I could only watch.

The movie-esque shot changed its camera angle, showing off a woman walking through the sand, kicking it up as she went.

She was a young adult, presumably. Short hair, curious expression, and tall horns. One horn ended in a point and the other ended in a downwards hook. They held a lot of resemblence to Kanaya’s horns, though Kanaya’s were much smaller.

Oddly enough, her long dress was in black and jade green, presenting her as a jadeblood, though her clothes were incredibly fancy for someone of such average status. _A highblood matesprit, maybe_ , I decided without much other thought about it, _Or maybe all adults just get fancy clothes._

“Hang on,” I heard myself wonder aloud. “If she’s an adult, why the fresh fuck is she waltzing around on Alternia like she owns the place?”

**_This is far, far in the past, before the adults left._ **

That was new. I never suspected there was ever a time where adults actually lived on Alternia, though as I thought about it, it made sense. We trolls couldn’t have just appeared one day, with superior intelligence and advanced space travel. But thinking of that only made me wonder why the adults ever left, or why the Condesce made them leave, other than to join her iron-fisted space army.

But, before I could wonder anymore, my attention was brought back to watching the lady.

The shawl of her dress swayed, as it seemed the wind was getting stronger, and more dirt was kicked up from the ground.

The ‘camera’ zoomed in, and I watched as the lady’s expression changed suddenly. She gasped, her eyes going wide with shock. She rushed forward, as if to get a better look at something. Like she’d… seen something strange?

It was a wriggler. A baby troll, surely no more than hours old. A wriggler, laying in the dirt.

The wriggler was squeaking with indiggnation, twitching helplessly. There were still bits of sticky eggshell stuck to it, and there were little circular stumps on its head where the horns would come in eventually. I’d never seen a wriggler in real life before, though I’d seen plenty of movies with wrigglers in them, so of course I knew what they looked like. Their body was colored in what their blood color was- making this wriggler’s body a bright candy red.

“Is that you?” I guessed.

**_Yes._ **

“How did she find you? She coulda been anywhere instead.”

**_Perhaps she was just in the right place at the right time. Or maybe, she was meant to find me, on a twist of fate and fortune._ **

“Misfortune, more like. Weren’t you tortured and executed?” I grumbled, not liking how whimsical my ancestor was turning out to be. “Also, I’ll go with the former. Right place, right time.”

**_For someone who watches a lot of romance movies, you don’t seem to believe in fate._ **

“Hey!” I shouted, defensive, “Don’t judge my taste in movies! There’s a reason those are fiction, old man. Fate is nice in stories, but it isn’t fucking real.”

The jadeblood lady crouched down in front of the wriggler, rather carefully picking it up. She cradled it in her arms, holding it close to her chest, looking down at it with an indescribable sort of concerned expression. The face of a caring lusus was the closet thing I could connect it too, for lack of a better way to put it. It was something I hadn’t seen before.

The scene faded away, and replaced itself with another.

It was the same jade lady, on a darker Alternian night, her features alight from the crackling campfire that sat in front of her. She was laughing, and clapping as she watched a young boy on the other side of the fire.

The boy was spinning on his toes, dancing around and gesturing wildly, like he was in the middle of telling an unbelievable story. Admittedly, he looked a bit like me, or at least he looked like me when I was much younger, maybe two or three sweeps old. His clothes were grey and tattered, threadbare and handmade. He was grinning, happy as could be. Without any extra commentary, I knew this was the Signless as a child.

**_She was called the Dolorosa, though I only knew her as Mom._ **

I vaguely recognized the term ‘Mom.’ I knew that some of the girls on Alternia, such as Aradia and Vriska, referred to their lusus as ‘Mom.’ I also recognized it, because ‘Mom’ was what Rose had called Roxy just yesterday. Not her name, or any other title like the other kids had- just ‘Mom.’

“She raised you,” I filled in the silence. “Like she was your lusus.”

**_And raised me as well as any lusus ever could._ **

I tensed, almost ready to defend that my lusus raised me better than some old lady ever could, but the Signless didn’t mention that, so I chose to shut my mouth and continue to watch.

The scene changed again, showing an older version of the Signless, outstretching his hand to the Dolorosa, with an iron medallion in his hand. A medallion of our sign- the ever secretive Sign of the Signless. 

**_When I was older, and my teachings grew more concrete, I created four pendants, three given to each of my closet followers, and one worn by myself. This was one of them._ **

The Dolorosa took the necklace from the Signless’s hand with a kind smile as she fastened it around her neck. He bounced up on his toes, and held out his own necklace, resting around his neck and in his hand. The Dolorosa, pulled him and close and hugged him, saying something quietly that I couldn’t hear from the muted audio of the dream.

Another scene change.

The Dolorosa looked older, and she looked angry. She was kicking and screaming and sobbing her eyes out, all while being restrained by two imperial soldiers attempting to hold her down in shackles. She escaped for a moment, trying to run free, only to be tackled again, sending her into heavier tears.

The camera shifted, turning to what she was staring at, and running towards.

The Signless, fully grown, hanging from his wrists by iron shackles, red with heat, in the shape of his pendant- his sign. His head was thrown back, forever frozen in empty agony. He didn’t move, and didn’t breath. Something with dark blue feathers stuck out of his chest, which I realized was an arrow, right in his blood pusher. Candy red blood, just like mine, dripped down his chest to the ground.

I felt sick. _Really_ sick. I was thinking that it was time to rename ‘The Trolls’ Trip to Earth,’ to ‘Karkat Feels Nauseous and is Unconscious.’

**_I think it tore her apart to watch me die._ **

I sniffled, frustrated that I was feeling sad while watching this play out, and how the Signless was not helping at all to make me feel any better.

Now the scene changed once more, showing the Dolorosa, in rags, side by side with another woman. They were standing on what looked to be the edge of a boat. I recognized the other woman instantly, due to my unfortune in knowing Vriska. The woman was Mindfang, Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, who I knew from Vriska’s gushing and endless fanart of her self proclaimed ancestor.

It was rather obvious that the Dolorosa was under mind control. Calm, motionless body yet terrified eyes. Mindfang snatched the pendant from her neck, snapping the chain.

Mindfang looked down at the pendant curiously, turning it over in her fingers.

And without another thought, she tossed it off the edge of the boat and into the ocean.

**_This would be the first of many times the Marquise saw that symbol._ **

The camera followed the necklace as it slowly sank down into the ocean, the grey iron growing darker as it fell into the shadows of the deep sea.

**_The Dolorosa’s pendant was never seen again. Maybe a young seadweller picked it up, unaware the meaning and weight it carried._ **

I could feel my shoulders sink, the way they do when a book you’re reading has an unsatisfying ending. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering how it must of felt for her. To watch the troll you raised from birth to die, and to watch your only physical memory, only reminder of him to be tossed into the ocean like a piece of trash. It hurt me, even though this had happened hundreds of sweeps ago, and I never experienced it. It hurt.

An ear splitting, metallic _clang_ rang through my head, and I didn’t think it was a part of the dream. Rather, something that came from outside, interrupting it.

It was like the material of the dream and the view of the ocean was starting to drain away, like falling sand. More thunderous clanging noises came to follow.

The Signless hummed mindlessly, as if he was expecting this to happen.

**_I believe that your friend is awake. You should go make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble, shouldn’t you?_ **

\------------------------------

The next thing I could feel was the cold, hard sensation of having fallen asleep on the floor.

My face was squished against the ground, which had grown only slightly warmer from me laying on it for several hours. Even as all of the trolls were cramped together to find a place on the floor to sleep, it still managed to be a chilly night.

On Alternia were were used to cold humid nights, and dry hot days, and it was already weird enough to be sleeping at night instead of daytime. But now, we were so, so cold when we were sleeping, which was annoying and uncomfortable as it is. Just thinking about how cold it must be outside, I shivered. Everyone else was still asleep.

Sleepy and still rather confused from my lucid dream, I sat up, pushing my arms back into the sleeves of my sweater. I first pulled them out of my sleeves, close to my chest, for extra warmth.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to focus them, which wasn’t hard, since trolls’ eyes were meant to be adapted for the dark.

I was just wondering what the Signless voice meant in that last sentence, when I got my answer.

Looking over to the other side of the shed, I saw Vriska standing upright, trying to tip-toe past the coating of her sleeping friends all over the floor- sneaking dramatically, like she were a cartoon character. Artfully stepping in the few places of uncovered floor there was, her arms out for balance, walking across the shed very, _very,_ slowly.

Even more confused than before, I just stared at her.

Vriska seemed to catch my eye, and grinned nervously. She looked back and forth, and then awkwardly waved.

“The hell do you think _you’re_ doing?” I mouthed, crossing my arms.

“Noooooooothing.” She mouthed back, her fangs glinting as she put on another nervous grin.

The was another long span of staring where neither of us moved. My eyes narrowed, this new situation distracting me from my weird dream. Really, where was Vriska going? Why was she awake?

She sighed slienty, seemingly giving up. “I’ll tell you outside,” she muttered, just loud enough for me to hear it correctly.

Which nobody should do, in retrospect, I stood and followed her.

Looking rather impatient, she held the door open for me as I parkoured over our sleeping friends. I really hope that Roxy’s house is going to have something more comfortable to sleep in as opposed to the floor. From the escape pod to the storage shed, I was, without a single doubt, completely sick of it.

I stepped outside, I was hit by a cool breeze. Vriska shut the door behind us, hesitating to let go of the handle for fear of making noise and waking somebody up.

“Okay, fine!” I snarled, “We’re out, now tell me what the hell you were doing.”

Vriska’s awkward nervousness of being caught sneaking out was entirely gone, replaced by her normal arrogance. “Aww, you’re _really_ invested in what I do in my spare time, that’s so sweet! Too bad it wasn’t sweet enough to remind you to mind your own damn business.”

“That’s _not_ spare time, fuckwad, it’s the middle of the night. Isn’t that just a little bit suspicious? Huh?”

Vriska rolled her eyes, leaning against the wall of the shed with her arms crossed. “Wow, somebody’s in love with this new human schedule. Trolls are naturally nocturnal, I’m practically waking up at a natural time! If anything, _you’re_ the weird one.”

“Just tell me what you were doing and I’ll let you brood in peace or whatever, unless it’s a dumb excuse.” I huffed, trying not to give in to her idiotic taunting.

“Unlike you scaredy-purrbeasts and fussyfangses and worrywarts- _I_ was off to go do something useful.” Vriska stuck out her chest proudly, prepared to be showered in praise. “I’m going to go back to the crash site to see if there’s anything else to scavenge from the wreck! Now that our two injured annoyances are gone, we don’t have to worry about them dying, or whatever, I can go back to the wreck and pick it apart.”

“That’s stupid!” I criticized, and then there was a long moment where neither of us spoke.

Vriska stopped leaning against the wall, and walked a few paces forward. A cool breeze blew, whipping her hair into her face. “Okay, you said you were gonna leave me alone once I told you, so go away.”

“I only said I’d go if it wasn’t a dumb excuse, and that was pretty dumb,”

“Everything’s dumb to you, Shouty!”

More silence, and I took the time to think up something quick. Truth be told, I would’ve liked to go back inside and let her get into whatever predicament she’d inevitably find herself in. Even though my (very platonic) hatred for her was in my head, a level of concern was too. I almost felt like, responsible for her, in a way. And something about what the Signless had said, ‘go make sure she doesn’t get into trouble,’ was that predicting something? Something that might happen to her if she goes out alone?

As much as a trashy, arrogant bitch as Vriska was, I didn’t want to see her get hurt.

“Well, if you’re going to go look at the crash site, then you should at least bring _somebody_ along with you who’s remotely responsible.”

“You’re right!” Vriska scoffed, “I’ll go wake up Kanaya.”

“I meant me, you cerulean asshat.” I gave her a look of annoyance. “I’m your leader, it’s literally my job to make sure you don’t go off and get lost, or make a bad choice and die, where nobody can find your body.”

“Oh, please, I can protect myself. You’ll just be a drag, another self-righteous bastard for me to stop from messing shit up.” She looked away from me, and started walking.

Once she started walking, I followed her. Though she let out a huff of irritation, she didn’t stop me.

“Whatever,” I heard her mutter.

The only noise was the rhythmic crunching of the grass, and the distant howling of the wind. I wrapped my arms around myself, though I wasn’t all that cold anymore, now that I was awake. It could get just as cold as this back on Alternia, though it was way less humid here on Earth. Prying my eyes away from the horizon line, I looked up at the sky.

It was a clearer night, though not entirely spottless. Twinkling stars were dotted across the sky, only ever obscured by thin grey clouds, like redacted lines of text in an old book. Earth only had one moon, and it was white. Though I found it strange, and sort of colorless, it was admittedly a nice change of scenery. I almost felt safe, here on this alien planet. Safe from the drones, and cruel highbloods, and maybe even the empire for a short while. From what I’d gathered, humans didn’t have drones, or at least, the human kids hadn’t mentioned any. Though, I could recall Dave mentioning something about ‘cops,’ or ‘police,’ which sounded like some form of law enforcement from how he talked about them. He also didn’t seem to like them very much, which made me a little wary around the idea of it.

I blinked, and my vision went a little funny from having stared at the crescent moon for so long.

For a few seconds, I turned around and walked backwards, still stride in stride with Vriska. We’d walked a very good distance away from the shed, as I couldn’t see it anymore, though I could see the roofs of some human hives poking over the horizon.

“Leader,” Vriska grumbled beside me, as I turned forward again. “Nobody made you leader, you declared it yourself. What a fucking selfish move.”

I scrunched my face up, reminded suddenly of my companian’s unpleasantry. “Really? This discussion again? I had this conversation with like, three different goddamn people back in the escape pod. I know I’m a pretty good leader!” A blatant lie. “My declaration of leadership was to help our fucking friends since I have some shadow of competance, though you sure wouldn’t know anything about that.” She’d know a thing or two. More than me. “That’s not selfish.”

Her eyes narrowed looking rather distasteful at my comment. “So you think you’re just the world’s best leader, huh?”

Truthfully, I didn’t. I thought I was the shittiest leader alive. I didn’t say that, though.

“So you’re a confident and assertive martyr, who can do no wrong, and has _never_ led his friends into danger,” Vriska’s shoulders hunched. “No _wonder_ Terezi likes you so much.”

It took me a moment to process what she’d said. 

 _Terezi. She was bringing up Terezi at an irrelevant time like this. I can’t fucking believe her._ I began to boil up with anger.

After boiling the anger for a good ten seconds, I finally burst out in enraged shouting. “Is this _SERIOUSLY_ what you’re _MAKING_ _THIS ABOUT?!”_

“That’s what it’s _always_ been about!” Vriska roared, sounding close to angry tears. “That’s always what it’s fucking been about, you dense, jealous freak! Why do you think we’ve never gotten along since we were _six_?!”

“Okay, for the record, Terezi doesn’t even like me,” I yelled. “She just fucking loathes you, and corelation not causation, maybe I’m slightly better to be around, since I don’t go around _blinding_ people because they were trying to stop you from jumping someone off a fucking cliff. You were planning to go fucking kill someone- hell, one of your friends! Terezi cut off your arm, you blind her back, and now she doesn’t like you. As a friend, as a quadrant, as _anything_ , and you did it to yourself!”

“I wasn’t planning to _kill_ him,” Vriska shot back defensively, “And Terezi doesn’t think any of that, she- she doesn’t loathe me. And- and, me and her are even steven, so there. We’re still friends, you’re just jealous!”

“The hell do you want, a gold star?”

We were rounding up on a big hill with faint light behind it, though I was so invested in the argument that I ignored it.

I continued on with my rant. “You know what’s the worst thing about this whole, stupid argument? You’re still in denial and can’t accept you two aren’t friends anymore, and you keep treating her like a fucking trophy you have to have to win, or some shit! You-”

“Hey, shut up, shut up for a second,” She interrupted, speaking quieter than before.

I glared over at her, about to yell at her so loudly and angrily that it had the potential to be in a thesaurus as an antonym for ‘ _shut up._ ’ 

She shushed me again, probably expecting this.There was a moment of eerie silence. 

Before I could ask any questions, her head turned to me in a slow, fluid movement, like that of a ghost. There was an expression on her face that I had never seen, in all of my time of knowing her. _Fear._ Vriska looked actually, genuinely scared. 

Her words came out in chilling hiss. “Karkat,” she shuddered. “ _Run_.”

Something about the way she said it made my skin crawl. I began to back away from her, one step at a time, afraid that she was going to attack me. _Was I really being that annoying? That she would really hurt me?_ I began to back up faster.

Vriska’s face twisted in complete hysteria. “For fuck’s sake, Karkat, RUN!” She was yelling at full volume now.

I don’t know what drove me to, but I obeyed without a second thought. I turned tail and sprinted in some direction, _any_ direction. I couldn’t tell, even with a troll’s natural night vision, it was like my whole field of sight went dizzy with mortification and my sense of direction of completely gone. I prayed to the clouds and stars that I wouldn’t trip, I wouldn’t stumble, that I would just get away from whatever I was running from. I must’ve run over the hill, at some point, and I heard a whole lot of threatening nothing.

But blinding light hit my eyes and I didn’t know where I was again.

A strict, unfamiliar voice cut through the darkness, “You're intruding on government property!”

They were interrupted by another voice, yelling something so loud and fast that I couldn't understand a word he said. There was running, grass crunching under heavy boots, more shouting that my thinkpan couldn't process.

A very Vriska-sounding scream echoed in the night. “Get your nasty fucking human hands OFF OF ME!”

I couldn't see her. I looked around wildly- even though I’d spend the whole way here arguing with her, all I wanted to know was that she was okay. “WHERE _ARE_ YOU?!” I cried.

If she responded, or even if she made any other noise, I didn't know, because something hit me hard on the back of my head. My knees buckled beneath me, my vision began to fade. Before I could fully fall into unconsciousness, my thinkpan was able to form one, last coherent thought.

_I fucking hate this planet._

My face hit the flattened ground with a thud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the dream sequence, you guys have no idea how hard it was to not use the word 'fatherly' while describing the Signless's voice. Long chapter here, y'all, so enjoy.


	7. Cultural Differences and Interviews - Jade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rose and Jade have some well deserved CANON *clap* INTERACTIONS *clap*

**Thursday Night** **  
****One day before Karkat and Vriska’s disappearance.**

To say that I was sitting in a car with my best friend, her mother, and two aliens sounded much weirder than it felt, with or without the context.

Rose and I had to help the trolls into the back seat while Rose’s mom started the car. I sat sandwiched between Sollux and Tavros. Sollux was completely limp against the wall, sitting noiselessly with the exception of your occasional grunt of immense pain. I also noticed that before Tavros sat down, he took off his jacket and put it down on the seat.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked.

He looked a little embarrassed. “I don’t want to get blood on the seat.”

“Hon,” Roxy sighed, sounding incredibly concerned. “That’s real nice of you, but you really don’t need to worry about that.”

Rose turned from the passenger seat to look back at the trolls, and me. “You’re holding up really well. If Dave or John were in your position of such a painful looking injury, I believe they would faint and declare themselves dead.”

“Uh,” Tavros glanced back and forth. “Thanks?”

I felt my phone vibrate in my skirt pocket. I took it out and looked to see a text from my grandpa, as I expected it to be.

 **GT:  Its ok if you stay at rose** **s for dinner, just be home by 8**

**GT:  Have fun!**

I grinned. “My grandpa says it’s okay to stay, but I’ve gotta go home at eight.”

“Well then,” Roxy replied, “Let’s get this show on the road!” Rose rolled her eyes at her mother, and leaned far back in her seat.

The car began to move, and I leaned over Sollux to roll down the window, looking out. Dave and John were still standing in Dave’s backyard, in front of the shed. They were waving, and I smiled widely and waved back. After sitting back in my seat, Sollux found great fascination in the window. Despite being most immoble at this time, he was able to move his finger to slowly roll down the window, and roll it up again. Repeatedly.

I noticed Tavros looked curious about the car, too. He was looking all around him, hitting his horn on the wall of the car. With horns like his, I wasn’t surprised. He must knock things over all the time.

“Sorry, I’ve just never been in a scuttlebuggy before.” He said, noticing me looking at him.

I choked on my own breath from sudden laughter. “You’ve never been in a _what?”_

“Scuttlebuggy.”

“What’s that?”

He looked confused. “Uh, this thing? That we’re in right now?”

That makes a little more sense. Trolls must just have a different word for car than humans did. That made enough sense, with language barriers and all. I think that the trolls had used some weird words around us. 

In fourth period in school today, which I had with John, he told me about how he asked the trolls why they could speak English, if they weren’t even from Earth. The trolls, apparently, explained how they _didn’t_ “speak human,” but each of them had a translator ring which auto-processed English into Alternian, and Alternian into English. John said that the ring was a thick band of metal with a little line down the center, but was otherwise completely unassuming. All their rings matched, according to him.

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Us humans call them cars. Hmm, wouldn’t your translator thing just translate scuttlebuggy straight to car?”

He shrugged. “Some words it directly translates the word, instead of translating its meaning, or something. Sollux knows more about it than me. Ask me about my planet’s native fauna, and then I might be able to answer your questions.”

Rose was looking back at us again, eyes wide with interest. “Your species has developed a technology that has the ability to nearly flawlessly pick up and translate alien languages into one another, entirely through audio? That’s just… riveting! To think that the words I’m hearing you saying right now aren’t really the words you’re saying at all, and my words aren’t what you’re hearing either! Why, that’s something straight out of science fiction. Does it work with scripts too?”

“No,” Sollux spoke suddenly, making everyone jump. “Or else we woulda figured out a shit ton of ancient runes a long time ago.”

“Oh, so _now_ you’re not in pain.” Tavros didn’t seem all that surprised by Sollux talking, looking over at him with a raised eyebrow. “And I’m gonna be forced, to listen to you talk about, coding and math-ey stuff.”

Sollux ignored him, looking at Rose. “Finally, somebody else here who has half a thinkpan.”

Rose and Sollux spend the rest of the car ride talking about troll technology and using far too many unnecessary vocabulary words. Or at least Rose was. I honestly couldn’t understand half of what Sollux was even saying, though Rose seemed to understand him just fine.

From what Roxy was doing, she seemed to be taking the longer, but less populous way back to her house. It was understandable enough, since her car was hot pink and drew enough attention on its own, and we didn’t really want people to see the trolls inside, though we made sure to tell them to cover their faces whenever another car drove near us. All of us doubted that people were going to call the police when they saw us, or anything like that, but you can’t be too careful. Plus, we had to get home now. Medical attention couldn’t wait.

I wasn’t convinced that the police were going to ‘attack on sight’ if they actually did see the trolls, because they’ve probably seen weirder things. And it was mid-October, too, so they might just write them off as some people wearing weird Halloween costumes several weeks early. But even so, I knew Roxy didn’t like anyone who worked for the government. After all, she worked for my grandpa at SkaiaNet, and nobody hated the government more than my grandpa.

At some point during the car-ride, while Sollux and Rose were still talking about whatever, I turned to Tavros.

“You mentioned that you knew a thing or two about your planet’s fauna?” I asked, with an encouraging smile.

His face lit up. “Yeah!”

Eventually, after a decently pleasant car trip, we arrived at Rose’s house. Admittedly, ‘house’ was an understatement, and it would be far more fitting to say ‘mansion.’ The house was truly huge. It was white and angular, with a modern, futuristic sort of look. I knew my way around well enough, since our friends spend a lot of time hanging out here.

What came to pass went by very quickly. Roxy parked the car, and we got the trolls out. After a bit more explaining and conversation as to what our plan was to help Sollux with his migraines, he _did_ have, though he managed to ignore them long enough to have a conversation about his planet with Rose. Either way, that didn’t change the fact that he had a temperature of 101°F, and an otherwise obvious fever. Roxy sort of just dropped him off on the couch in her living room, where he collapsed and demanded complete darkness and silence. Darkness and silence wasn’t a difficult task, since we weren’t going to spend much time in that part of the house anyway. He’d be fine.

Next was the surgery to get the shrapnel out of Tavros’ knee, which was much more complicated. Roxy claimed that both me and Rose would be able to help, which I was excited for, but Rose seemed a little grossed out. I wasn’t surprised to find out that Roxy had a doctor’s office looking room in her house. She said that Rose and I would have to wash our hands before and after the surgery, and wear gloves and a mask, even if we weren’t the ones actually performing it.

Though, as we were getting ready for it, Roxy came out of the supply closet with a syringe full of anesthesia.

Tavros froze at seeing it. “That’s a needle.”

“Oh, it’s just a little anesthesia, nothing to worry about.” Roxy walked forward to sit down next to him to see the syringe.

“What’s that?” He asked, not looking any less scared.

“Well…” Roxy hummed, confused. “Well, when the liquid stuff in the needle gets injected into your bloodstream, you’ll fall asleep. So, when we do the surgery, you’ll be asleep and you won’t feel a thing, and it won’t hurt at all. Say, don’t you have doctors or hospitals or some other way to help? What do people on your planet do when something like this happens?”

“Uh, you bleed out and die, I guess,” Tavros said with a shrug. “But this anastasia stuff will just make me fall asleep, and not hurt me, right?”

“Nope! Just the opposite, really; it’ll stop you from getting hurt. Worst case scenario you’re a little bit ditzy when you wake up.”

And that was the end of that. I wasn’t totally sure if Tavros genuinely believed Roxy about the anesthesia, but he didn’t protest either way. 

The surgery went smoothly. Or, at least, I _think_ it did. I really only watched Roxy mutter to herself and swear occasionally, and I silently panicked whenever I heard her say, “That’s not good,” or “Christ, I'm too sober for this.” Rose and I took turns doing things like fetching Roxy bandages or surgical tools, and holding open Ziploc bags so Roxy could put shrapnel shards and blood samples in them. Give or take a half hour later, the surgery was over.

While Roxy took some time to clean up, she sent Rose and I outside to relax.

We collapsed on a nearby couch, as friends do.

Before we did, though we each fixed ourselves a bowl of cereal to eat as some form of dinner before I had to go home.

“Amazing,” Rose sighed, almost laughing. “These creatures, trolls, have developed advanced space travel and hyper-accurate translator technology, yet they’ve never heard of surgery. How.. how did they even make it this far?”

“They’re hardier than us, probably.”

Rose shifted, draping herself over the arm of the couch. “Among other things. Remember how some of the other trolls so casually described how Sollux ‘plugged himself into’ their spaceship. Like, the hell does that even mean? I have so many questions!”

I peeled off my plastic gloves and balled them up into a trash-orb. “Well, I think I know how you can get to ask all those questions.”

“How’s that?” Rose sat up, looking curiously at me.

An uncontainable grin spread across my face. “Science sleepover!”

Rose laughed. “A science sleepover? God, we haven’t had one of those since sixth grade! How did they work… we’d write some kind of scientific hypothesis and research it during the sleepover. What a nerdy thing for us little loner kids to do.”

“They were _so_ fun, though.”

“They were,”

We sat in comfortable silence for a few moments. It felt like forever since I’d spent some quality time with Rose, even though I saw her basically every day. And what else could get us some quality friendship time than to have a ritual sleepover to bother a bunch of disgruntled aliens? Nothing, that’s what, and god dammit I was going to have a sleepover with my best friend if it was the last thing I did.

“So, I’ll come over to your house tomorrow at seven, I’ll bring snacks.” I prompted, refixing my glasses as I looked over at her. “And we can interview the aliens.”

Rose looked thoughtful, like she was finally taking this idea seriously instead of as some kind of an ironic joke. “How about we each come up with ten questions to ask the trolls, and then we’ll compare tomorrow.”

“Perfect!” I exclaimed and we both dissolved into laughter.

And we sat there on that couch, eating cereal. With the sounds of Roxy mumbling to herself a few rooms over, and distant thunder outside, everything seemed like it was okay.

\------------------------------

My list of questions was quite simple, really, though I knew the answers wouldn't be. I had come up with four of the questions last night, and six of them at school today. I didn’t know what Rose’s questions were, but I thought mine were quite good, as far as questions go. They were written on a scrap of notebook paper, taped to the remains of an old clipboard I found in my attic. I had a pen tucked behind my ear, which gave me the reporter look I was looking for.

I hopped out of my grandpa’s car, turned to wave goodbye to him. “Bye, Pop! Have a nice evening by yourself!”

He smiled a warm smile at me and waved back. “Of course, Jade. Please tell Dr Lalonde I said hello, and I look forward to hearing about her new SkaiaNet project.”

“Will do.”

I flung my backpack over my shoulder, which had snacks and my pajamas in it. With one last glance at the car, I walked up the steps to Rose’s house, reviewing the grimy sheet of notebook paper in my hands one last time.

First off, there was generic stuff asking about their full name, how old they were, and how they were feeling. Then, the real interview questions. _What is your planet called and what is it like there? Describe an average day of life for you on your planet. How did get your spaceship you used to escape? Why did you leave? How far away is your planet? What sort of unique abilities does your species possess? Do you feel safe here on Earth? Wouldn’t your parents be worried about you leaving? Where are your parents? Do you have any questions about Earth or humans?_

I nodded to myself as I read them over, and I heard the noise of my grandpa’s car speeding away behind me.

Once I reached the door, I knocked a couple times, and rang the doorbell for good measure.

After only a few seconds, the door opened, and there stood Rose, holding a clipboard of her own. “Spectacular, you’re here!” She smiled, extending her arms out for a hug. We hugged, and she stepped back so we could both walk inside.

“Yeah, you’ve got your questions?” I asked, looking down at her clipboard.

She nodded and held it out for me to see. “We should swap so we can compare questions and see if there’s any more we can come up with, or have to rewrite.”

We swapped clipboards, and I noticed hers was a lot nicer than mine was. Her clipboard probably hadn’t been rotting away in an attic for several years, before being needed again only to interview some aliens.

“Hey Jadesy!” I heard Roxy call from the living room. “We’re gonna order some food, do you wanna get it from, like Panda Express, or Panda Express?”

“Panda Express is fine, thanks.”

Ah, takeout, the ambrosia of a Science Sleepover. We only ever got food from one place, being Panda Express, since it tasted good and Roxy couldn’t cook to save her life. Because of that, Rose didn’t usually get home cooked meals by her mother, so they mostly just ate microwaveable food or out as restaurants. Whenever we hung out at John’s house, Rose was often surprised by the complex and filling meals John’s dad cooked (John’s dad was the best baker out of all our parents). Rose was in the same boat as Dave that way, though at least Roxy tried to make food for her daughter. Dave’s Bro really just threw a bag of Doritos and the phone number for Pizza Hut at him and expected him to figure it out.

“Thank goodness,” Rose said with a subtle giggle, “We had to go over all the options on the website with our two extra terrestrial friends just to order them something, since they didn’t know a thing on the whole menu!”

“Speaking of those two…” I quickly got distracted by Rose’s mention of the trolls.

I didn’t finish my own sentence, looking around the room in search of the trolls. My eyes landed on the two boys sitting as far from the door as one could be. Tavros was sitting in the recliner chair. His bad knee was all wrapped up in bandages but it didn’t seem nearly as bad as it was yesterday, or the day before, and it didn’t look as painful. Sollux was lounging on the couch next to said recliner, staring at what I assumed was his cell phone. The trolls equivalent of a cell phone, at least.

I took Rose by the arm and walked over to where the trolls were, greeting them with my signature, friendly smile. “Hey there, you two! Who’s ready to get interviewed?”

Tavros seemed a little put off by that last part. “Uh, what interview?”

“Don’t worry, it’s not official or anything like that, just for fun!” I looked to Rose for support, who nodded and hummed an affirmative _‘mhmm.’_ I continued, “Sollux, what do you think? Excited to answer some questions?”

He didn’t answer. In fact, he didn’t acknowledge me at all.

There was an instance of unnecessary silence.

“Aw, damn,” Sollux said finally, though it certainly wasn’t directed at me; he was still staring down at his phone. “There’s a new season of Slam or Get Culled, and all of the contestants are complete shit. According to Bloodzfeed, the whole season is looking bad.”

“Oh, well you know not to get all your information off of Bloodzfeed,” Tavros glanced over at the other boy, seemingly indifferent. “Wait, since when have you liked that show?”

“I _don’t_ like it,” Sollux retorted, “But I know you watch it, so I was just being nice!”

“Geez.” Tavros crossed his arms, obviously pretty exasperated with his friend. “Hang on, how do you even have _signal,_ this is an alien planet!?”

“I have my ways.”

Roxy walked out of the kitchen, so I could see her now. She was wearing a silky pink bathrobe with flannel pajamas underneath. “Rosey, Jadsey, I get that’cha are really excited for for pop-quizzing the trolls about their geography and government, but I think it would be better for everyone to get some food in them first. Just wait for the takeout to get here, then you can go crazy, go stupid.”

Rose’s face scrunched up in frustration. “Fine, Mother. Show Jade the menu so she can order something.”

I ended up ordering orange chicken and rice, something I got regularly and I knew tasted good. The best part about it was that the food didn't take that long to get there, and arrived shortly after fifteen minutes. We sat in the living room in a nest of blankets, where Rose was demonstrating to me and the trolls how to properly use chopsticks (none of us succeed, despite her teachings).

We managed to keep Sollux and Tavros sitting with us, though they weren't too enthusiastic about it.

“How are you two feeling?” I asked, stuffing a spoonful of rice into my mouth. “Both of you were a little beat up the other day, you doing better?”

Tavros nodded, as Sollux was still scrolling away on his phone. “I still can’t really walk, but it’s better. Apparently I was rambling while under the anesthesia-something stuff, which I vaguely remember.”

“Yeah,” Sollux chimed, “You were following around Roxy like a lost barkbeast and telling her about Fiduspawn, and the second I was awake you wouldn’t shut up. Thank fuck it wore off eventually, I think my body was going into rigor mortis listening to you talk about that stupid game. Oh, and you took a box of tissues and lit the tissues on fire one by one until the whole room smelled like burnt tissues.”

“Alright,” I interrupted before they could start a conversation of their own. “We’re gonna start with some generic questions. For starters, what are your full names?”

“Tavros Nitram.” Tavros said, and looked over at Sollux expectantly. “And Solluxander Captor.”

Sollux just about shattered. “Oh shut up, you _know_ that’s not my real, you ass!”

Rose and I giggled. Of all things, I certainly wasn’t expecting ‘Solluxander.’ But, I managed to clear my throat and attempt to retain my professional look, though the attempt wasn’t going spectacularly. “Right, Nitram and Captor. And how old are you?”

“Seven.” Tavros answered.

Rose and I were honestly so taken aback by this answer that we were left speechless.

“Okay, very funny,” Rose mused, reacting quickly. “How old are you actually?”

“Seven? I just told you? Why would I- how old are _you?”_

“The two of us, and our other two friends are all sixteen years old.” Rose explained carefully.

Both boys looked significantly weirded out. “The fuck, you guys are adults!” Sollux gritted his teeth in concern. “And what the hell is a year? Do you mean sweep?”

Rose lit up triumphantly. “Just as I suspected!” she exclaimed, “We have different ways for keeping track of long-term time! It makes sense, after all, surely your planet and Earth can’t have the same orbit around each of their respective suns. It they did, that would be quite an odd coincidence. Say, Sollux, how many days does it take for your planet to orbit about your sun?”

“Weird way to phrase it, but about 780 nights make a sweep.” Sollux responded. 

Rose snapped her fingers with a look of satisfaction and pride. “Ah, that explains it! That’s not so strange after all. At first I just thought your species aged very fast, but this for more makes sense. Our years have fewer days than that, so actually, we should be close to the same age.”

“Well great!” I looked excitedly to Rose and back at the still confused trolls. “Let’s start asking the real questions.”

After asking several more questions, my notes on the back of my paper had grown into a longer sheet full of facts and little things I found interesting. _“Come from a planet called Alternia, which quote en quote ‘Sucks ass.’ Planet is swarmed by dangerous robots at night and zombies(?) during the day. Count by ‘solar sweeps,’ not years. Trolls are nocturnal. Most trolls are left handed, and write from right-to-left instead of left-to-right. Troll horns release excess heat or draw in extra, depending on the temperature. Some trolls live underwater? (sea-dwellers?) Trolls hatch from eggs (unsure). Trolls think fashion is stupid.”_

The most interesting thing I wrote about was the story of how they acquired their ship. There was a military spaceship that came to the planet each sweep to collect trolls who wanted to join the military (Or at least, that’s what I assumed. Sollux just phrased is as ‘the ship that comes to take away the nine-sweepers’). The twelve trolls snuck onto the ship and stole one of their escape pods, and got as far away from their planet as they could.

In Rose’s own words, it was something straight out of a sci-fi movie.

On a different note, Sollux and Tavros liked the food they’d ordered, and managed to eat every last crumb.

“My turn to ask a question,” Rose said, before I continued continue plaguing the trolls with unplanned inquiries. “Does the ruler of your people rule over just one country, or the whole planet?”

“Planet?” Sollux repeated.

“Yes.”

Sollux burst out laughing. “Holy shit, planet? No, the Batterwitch has to own half the galaxy by now, and she’s probably rampaging even farther than that.”

Rose cleared her throat awkwardly, writing down some more notes. “Alright, that answers that. You called this ruler the… Batterwitch?”

“Well that’s not, uh, the Empress’s real name,” Tavros said, as Sollux was still too busy laughing on the floor. “It’s just something us lowbloods call her to make us feel better about the fact she had to power to murder us with the flick of her webby finger. Her big famous title is ‘Her Imperious Condescension.’ The Condesce, for short.”

I wrote down _‘Empress rules over everything’_ and _‘Tyrant’_ down into my notes.

“And for how long has this Condesce been the Empress?” Rose continued.

Both trolls didn’t answer, like they were thinking very hard. “I don’t really know,” Sollux admitted after a few seconds. “Like, forever? I think it’s five-thousand sweeps or maybe more.”

Five-thousand sweeps. Wow, that was equivalent to… No, I couldn’t do the mental math. Every possibility as to what this meant began to cross my mind. Did trolls just live for an extraordinarily long time? No, maybe the Condesce wasn’t really a person, just a public figure that would be replaced by a new one whenever the old one died, and her people were brainwashed into thinking she was a real person rather than a metaphorical figur-

“How long do trolls live?” If it was possible to look both fascinated and uncomfortable at the same time, that’s how Rose looked.

“Depends on your blood color, obviously.” Sollux leaned back, laying down on the floor.

Oh, not this again. “So, how exactly does this blood color system work?” I asked gently, “I’ve heard you guys talking a lot about it.

“Uh, there’s eleven blood castes.” Tavros was starting to look tired too, and might’ve been laying on the ground like Sollux. “Rust, bronze, and gold are lowbloods. Olive, jade, teal, and cerulean are midbloods. Indigo, purple, violet, and fuchsia are highbloods. I’m a bronzeblood and Sollux is gold, but you probably know that already.”

“So both of you are lowbloods?”

Tavros nodded.

“Cool!” I leaned forward some, “Does your species have any cool kind of abilities?”

“Yep, or at least, I think they’re cool,” Tavros mumbled, “Lowbloods have powers as a sort of evolutionary tactic so we can protect ourselves. Didn’t really work, though.”

“Backfired hard!” Sollux said in a singsong voice.

Rose furrowed her brow in confusion. “How could giving the underclass superpowers possibly backfire?” Rose’s comment was sarcastic but her tone wasn’t.

Sollux laughed in the sort of way somebody who was truly exhausted could. “Take me, for example! How do you think we got here on this planet? I had to power the ship! That’s what goldbloods do, we’re the Empress’s pets and batteries ‘til we die!” He laughed again.

It was a level of optimistic nihilism I could’ve related to under different circumstances, but he sounded so serious about it that I couldn’t.

“And what powers do you have, again?”

“I was trying to- oh, nevermind. How powerful you are with your powers really depends, because some people can have really minor abilities, really powerful ones, or no powers at all. Not every with, uh, the potential to have powers is like, super crazy powerful with them. Rustbloods, like Aradia have telekinesis and can talk to the dead, and she's, uh, really powerful in both of those respects. Goldbloods, like Sollux here, have psionics, which can be kind of like a fancy telekinesis, and often times laser vision, but um, it varies from person to person. Then, skip to ceruleans who, uh, they can do mind control.” He tensed a bit at the words _‘mind control,’_ like they hurt to say.

I blinked, not quite believing he was using words like ‘telekinesis’ like they were completely real and normal. “My god, how do your parents deal with this?”

“Speaking of, where are your parents?” Rose raised her eyebrow in concern, “Wouldn’t they be a little bit concerned about you stealing an escape pod off of a dangerous battleship and running away to another galaxy.”

“What are parents?” Tavros looked over at Sollux, like he was looking for an answer from him.

My heart sunk. “Oh, wow, that’s gotta be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Parents are like the adults who raise you, and teach you how the world works and such.”

“Oh! So a lusus!” Tavros regained some form of understanding in his face, and I let out a sigh of relief.

But before I could ask all about what a lusus was Roxy came walking into the living room, holding a glass of wine and an entire tub of ice cream with a spoon buried into it. She looked tired too- her hair was all messed up and her makeup was smudged. “Okay junior reporters,” She grinned goofily at me and Rose, “I know you wanna stay up all night asking these boys about alien stuff, but I think it’s really time we ought to get these two to bed. Tomorrow morning we’re fetching their friends from the shed, and I think we should let them get some sleep.”

“Finally,” Sollux hissed, wrinkling his nose.

“Awwww,” I complained. Rose crossed her arms with a vague noise of frustration.

“You two can stay up talking, as long as you don’t bug these boys,” Roxy patted Sollux and Tavros on each of their heads, and both of them tensed up and shrank away from her hand.

After some protest from us to no avail, Roxy got Sollux and Tavros followed her to the guest room they’d be staying in—Rose was very jealous, because the said guest room had these cool beds that were bunk beds, but the bottom bunk pulled out into a trundle, so it was enough to hold six people. Roxy planned on splitting the trolls in half by putting the boys in one room and the girls in the other. 

Several minutes passed of Rose and I sitting on the floor in our blanket-nest, pouting about how we had to cancel our scientific research.

Roxy returned after our minutes of pouting with a very troubled expression.

“What’s wrong?” asked Rose.

Roxy sat down on the couch, looking down at her daughter. She sighed, and held her head in her hands. “You gals want to know something the trolls? I got something.”

“What is it?” I took up my clipboard again, ready to take some more notes.

“Something…” I’d never seen Roxy so stressed looking. "Something is seriously _wrong_ with the trolls. Maybe it's just these two and we got unlucky but..." She took a shaky breath, "I mean, aside from the fact that I just had to explain what a bed was. Apparently trolls sleep in tubs of green slime! But still, that's still sort of a 'weird alien' thing, but there's something else. They're so scrawny, like they've been starving."

"Well, they didn't have food for two days," I suggested. It didn't seem all that strange. 

"Not like that," Roxy denied, "It's more like... systemically underfed. Not necessarily underdeveloped, but it's pretty clear these guys didn't have a consistent source of food, and they've been partially starving from a very young age. That's not all; they seem so flinchy! And defensive, and paranoid, and they act like I'm about to attack them at any second. Especially Tavros. Say, Rose, what does Tavros' flinchy kind of behavior look to you?"

Rose backed up a little in surprise at this question, she was thinking hard. "Well, now that I think of it... Oh, dear. I don't want to make any assumptions, but it seems a bit like an after-effect of past abuse."

"Exactly what I was thinking," Roxy agreed. "I'm not making assumptions either but, honestly, something is just so _off_ about them."

There was a pause that felt like it went on for hours.

Roxy stood up. "I'm going to bed. You girls should try to get some sleep too, I don't want you pulling an all-nighter.”

I sat there and watched her go.

\------------------------------

Rose and I ended up falling asleep at around 4 in the morning, because we couldn’t stop talking. We built an enormous pillow fort which was one of the greatest forts I’ve ever built, though it was incredibly unstable and the blanket roof kept falling down. The two of us crawled inside and watched videos on Youtube for ages, and we took a good ten minutes after each video to talk about it and discuss personal stories that it reminded us of.

When we woke up on Saturday, it was 11:30 in the morning.

I was sprawled over the floor, still in my normal clothes with a blanket thrown lazily over my back. When I opened my eyes hazily, I used my hand to search for my glasses so that everything wasn’t completely blurry. I found them eventually, sliding them onto my face. The world came into a bit more of focus, though since I’d only just woken up, it was blurry anyway.

I noticed Rose in a similar situation I was. She glanced over at me and smiled. “Hey.” Her lipstick that she’d neglected to wash off was smudged all over her pillow.

“Hey,” I echoed, and I struggled to get up off the floor.

“You’re phone was buzzing a while back,” Rose mumbled sleepily. “Think it’s a text.”

My phone was near where my glasses were. I unlocked it  and was immediately blinded by the influx of light that hit my eyes. I squinted through the eye-pain as I tried to check my texts.

“It's…” My voice trailed off as I stared down at it. “It _is_ a text. It’s from Dave. He sent it twenty minutes ago.” I didn’t bother to see Rose’s reaction, too enamoured with worry as I looked down at Dave’s message.

 **\--** **turntechGodhead** **[** **TG** **] began pestering** **gardenGnostic** **[** **GG** **] at 11:11 AM --**

**TG:  hey jade**

**TG:  weve got a problem**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the longest chapter I've written so far. I'm so proud.  
> also, in case anybody is wonder this story takes place in Tacoma, a city in Washington State off the coast of Puget Sound. If anybody reading this is from Tacoma, please tell me a thing or two about what it's like there (restaurants, any quirky city-specific stuff), because I'm not from there.  
> otherwise, enjoy the chapter and give me feedback and/or typo catches! every time I get a comment my brain does the happy. thank y'all.


	8. A Few Clever Ways to Get Killed - John

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case any of y’all are playing through friendsim or pesterquest, john excerpts some serious MSPA reader energy in this chapter. oh, and you can hear vriska screaming somewhere, because it’s chapter EIGHT and she’s not there.

The phrase ‘being up early’ is entirely circumstantial. One may consider that waking up at around 6:30 in the morning for school is very early, but because it’s what the ‘norm’ is in one’s life, it may not seem too early. On the other hand, waking up at 3am for a first thing in the morning plane flight is easily considered early, though at that point it’s less ‘being up early’ and more ‘being up in the middle of the night.’

Most applicable was my case. When it’s Saturday morning, ‘being up early’ really just means ‘being up before 10 in the morning,’ which I just happened to be. It was fifteen minutes before 10, but it still counted!

I washed my face and got changed, typical morning stuff. As I did, I thought about what was going on that day. Nothing much, I thought, it was a Saturday after all.

All of a sudden, I remembered the trolls, and the fact that I had to check in with them. Roxy was transferring the other ten trolls from the shed to the Lalonde house. I definitely wanted to be present for that, and helping them get settled.

After laying awake in bed for a few minutes, I decided I'd had enough of it, and stood up to leave the room.

When I walked out of my bedroom and began to shamble down the steps, I heard muffled speech from below. At first, I assumed my dad was talking on the phone to someone until I saw what I saw what was actually happening; The front door was open, and my dad was standing in the doorway, talking to somebody standing outside.

I froze in my tracks. And without much thought, I turned on my heel and started walking back upstairs.

“John, come back here for a minute.” My dad said.

I inhaled sharply as I froze again, hunching and sinking my shoulders all in one motion. “Coming.”

I sauntered to the bottom of the stairs to stand next to my dad, and I could finally see who was standing outside the door that my dad was talking to.

Imagine what you’d expect a stereotypical CIA agent to look like. Black suit, pale skin, dark sunglasses, gelled hair, and a poorly hidden comm-speaker on the side of his face. Well, that’s exactly what this guy looked like. With a flick of his arm like he did it every day (which he probably did), he took a card out of his pocket and flashed a very official looking CIA badge in my face. I nodded awkwardly, not knowing how to respond.

“This is my son, John. John, this man works for the CIA,” My dad explained and I fought the urge not to shout _‘called it!’_ “He wants to ask you a couple questions. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble or anything.”

“Oh,” I answered, squinting weirdly. “Okay.”

“Have you seen any suspicious individuals lately, young man?” the CIA agent asked.

What I _wanted_ to say was, _‘What, you mean like yourself?’_ but I didn’t say that because it sounded like a real quick way of getting shot in the face, just with extra steps. So instead, I said, “Nope,” In my most nonchalant teenager-voice and tried to make it sound like I wasn’t lying through my teeth.

“Anyone who seems to be… dressed early for Halloween?” He continued.

“Just you!” I exclaimed, and immediately regretted it- it just slipped out without thinking. _Now_ I was going to get shot, I was such an idiot.

“John,” My dad warned, very sternly.

But I couldn’t stop there. I laughed dismissively and went on, “Like, what movie are you dressing up as? Men in Black? Oh, I loved that one- I mean, now _that’s_ what you call a classic Will Smith movie. Everybody says the sequels sucked but I like them! Still can’t beat the original, though, in my opinion.” Was this how be be unsuspicious? I had no idea what I was doing. “Anyway what do you think of that new one that came out recently with Chris Hemsworth in it? I haven’t gotten around to seeing it but the reviews say it’s pretty good. Oh, hang on, you’re not Men in Black, you’re Agent Smith from the Matrix! Now _that’s_ a classic! Can’t get a better Keanu Reeves movie than-”

“You answered the question.” The CIA agent growled, and I could see it was getting difficult for him to remain composed and not lash out and get annoyed. “Has anyone that you know mentioned seeing anything suspicious?”

Ooh, maybe I could _annoy_ him into going away! Even if I came off as suspicious he’d been so fed up with me that he wouldn’t come back.

I cleared my throat and thought up an answer. “Well _actually,_ now that I think about it, my friend Rose saw this yeehaw looking dude with a straw hat and all in a lime green sports car, and I think that’s pretty weird! I’m gonna get my license soon but I’d never get a car in lime green. Or wear a straw hat, but that’s unrelated, haha.”

The agent was looking more pained by the second. “Have you seen anything strange in terms of the landscape, like phenomenons in the sky?”

“I saw a helicopter yesterday!” I grinned stupidly.

I couldn’t see my dad’s face but he was probably in as much pain as the agent.

“I think that’s all. Thanks for your help.” The agent stated coolly, and started to turn to walk away from the house.

“Hey what’s going on?” I continued, my voice beginning to borderline on Spongebob levels of irritating. “We deserve to know! Why are you going door-to-door, after all? Is it a matter of national security? Because, if it is, then we as the citizens of this country should know about something dangerous happening here. My government teacher says that the youth of today ought to be informed on current issues if we want to be a part of the change. Y’know in movies that government doesn’t tell people stuff because they don’t want to cause a public panic, but personally I think the public will panic more if you don’t tell them than if you do!”

I was pushing it. I knew it. _Hide in plain sight, please don’t do something more stupid than what I’m already doing._ I getting close to starting to freak out internally.

The agent took a deep breath; perhaps he was reminding himself that murder of children was frowned upon. “Look, kid, It’s confidential and nothing you need to worry about.”

“Those two things contradict.” I began, but deflated after noticing my dad’s look of Fatherly Disapproval.

“Just let me get back to work. Have a nice day.” The way he said ‘nice’ was strained in an exhausted sort of way, but not a malicious one.

He walked away and my dad shut the door. He turned to me.

I shrank away under his gaze, and I instantly knew I messed up. Suddenly, keeping the trolls secret and staying unsuspicious didn't matter to me. If my dad was disappointed in me, I’d have a new set of problems on my hands, not to mention an inevitable guilt episode.

“John, I don’t know what it is you were thinking.” He sighed, raising an eyebrow down at me.

I stared at my feet.

“That wasn’t very polite at all,” He scolded. “You can’t speak to a government agent like that. They’re working to protect you, and no matter what you think of them, you should talk to them with respect.”

I bowed my head and hunched my shoulders. “Sorry, Dad, I just got nervous.”

“It’s alright,” He ruffled my hair, and I felt a little better when I noticed his warm smile. “Just want to keep you safe, son.”

He walked back away from me and into the kitchen, where he was presumably preparing breakfast. I continued to stand by the door, completely lost in thought.

It honestly didn’t make sense why I was so paranoid and secretive of something I wasn’t being accused of. If I was trying so hard to be unsuspicious while answering their questions, there was a way to actually be suspicious. _Suspicious of what?_ I asked myself, feeling very confused very abruptly. _Hiding aliens?_ How was I supposed to be suspicious of something that the CIA agent hadn’t even been asking about? _Maybe that’s what he_ was _asking about._

_Oh shit._

_They know._

_They know they know they know they know._ I was actually freaking out now, and my mind was racing with theories. The police must’ve found the crash site of the trolls’ spaceship, called the FBI, and the FBI didn’t know what to do so they called the CIA, and possibly the president or something worse. This was bad, _very_ bad. The American government might just be thinking that aliens just crash landed on Earth, and typical of the government, they’ll instantly assume that the trolls are evil and obviously are here to destroy Earth. We’ll be under surveillance, it’ll be too dangerous for us to do anything.

We had to hide the trolls better, starting right now.

“Hey Dad?” I called to the kitchen. “Can I go over to Dave’s house?”

He poked his head out of the kitchen door. “Sure, but only after you’ve eaten breakfast. Wait, do you have any homework you need to do first?”

“Nope!” I quickly excused, and I didn’t know if I was lying or not. I couldn’t remember if I had any homework, but there was something far more important at hand. I had to talk to Dave now, and check on the trolls now. Our very lives could be in danger!

Maybe I was being a little bit dramatic.

“Just have some cereal or toast or something else, and get dressed.” My dad told me, “Then you can go over to Dave’s. But if it seems like no one’s home, or he’s still asleep, you shouldn’t try to bug him.”

That bowl of cereal was easily the thing I’d eaten the fastest in my entire life.

I’d gotten dressed in a grey t-shirt, cargo pants and blue high-tops. My dad insisted on me wearing a jacket, since it was a cold morning in October, and I reluctantly complied, as much of a rush I was in to get out of the house. I waved goodbye to my dad, more curt than I’d intended, and ran out the front door.

I ended up sprinting the whole two blocks to Dave’s house from sheer panic alone.

Our neighborhood was rather cookie-cutter, I had to admit. All the houses looked rather similar, and they were all painted shades of muted colors with dark grey roofs. Dave used to live in an apartment building down in Texas, but he moved here to Washington in elementary school for personal reasons he didn’t talk about much. Dave’s house was a muted dark red color which made it look a little like a barn (a joke I’ve made several times already).

Once I skidded to a stop at the door, I located the doorbell and rang it about a million times, and didn’t stop ringing it until the door eventually opened.

However, I was not met with Dave’s careless gaze.

In fact, I was met by a muscular, six-and-a-half foot tall man wearing pointy anime shades and a baseball cap. He held a glass of some beverage that one would hope was lemonade, but deep down I knew it was Mountain Dew. He looked down at me with the kind of unimpressed, vaguely annoyed look you’d get from a football quarterback looking at a nerdy high-school kid. I _was_ a nerdy high-school kid, but that wasn’t the point.

The man was Dirk, Dave’s older brother and legal guardian. When Dave and I hung out I saw him here and there, though it wasn’t often he was at home.

Since I’d been expecting to greet Dave with a loud _‘Sup fucker, something’s wrong,’_ my mouth was hanging open slightly as I just stood there awkwardly, because it wasn’t Dave there to greet me at the door and that would not end well if I said it anyway.

“Is Dave home?” I asked very quickly.

“Good morning to you too.” Dirk took a drink from his Mountain Dew.

“Is Dave home?” I repeated, more firmly this time. Hey, I’d canned these worms, now I had to lie in them.

“Living room.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder into the house.

He stepped aside to let me in, and as I speed-walked forward into the house, I nearly collided with Dave himself.

He was still in his pajamas and had neglected to put on his sunglasses, showing off his piercing red eyes. He must’ve heard his name get called by me because he’d only just walked into the room. He looked confused, though it was resolved once he saw me. “Oh, sup John,” He crossed his arms across his chest. “What are you doing here so early?”

“We need to talk,” I urged, “A while ago, I just figured I had to tell you, I-”

My voice cut off abruptly when I saw Dirk walking by us again. He cast a glance at us before turning his attention to putting some bread in the toaster.

I couldn’t tell Dave the truth while Dirk was in the room- as much as Dirk didn’t care about stuff in general, he would be asking questions about my somewhat insane story of the CIA agent, and he’d definitely be confused as to what the hell I meant by “hide the trolls better.”

I disguised my sudden freeze as a cough. “Uhm, well, last night I had this totally crazy _dream._ I wanted to tell you.” I winked when I said ‘dream,’ only so Dave could see the wink, not Dirk.

He took a moment to process it, but whispered a silent “Oh,” and nodded.

“Anyway,” I went on, “The dream went like this. I woke up on Saturday morning, like today but in the _dream._ I walked downstairs and saw the front door open, and my dad was talking to someone outside. I tried to go back to my room but couldn’t and my dad called me down. The person in the doorway was this weird government agent-looking guy. He like, basically looked like a Men in Black agent.” Dave nodded again in understanding, seemingly more intrigued than before. “Then the agent guy started asking me questions about any weird stuff I’d seen recently, and my dream-brain was telling me that he was obviously looking for aliens, and for some reason I said some stupid stuff in the dream, but the guy left and I woke up.”

Dave gave me a true friendship look of understanding. “Oh, wow, that is weird as hell. I can get why you had to tell me.”

Without warning, Dave started patting his pockets, like he was looking for something.

“What is it?” I inquired, actually curious.

“Aw, damn, I left my phone on the back porch,” Dave explained, with a similar exaggerated tone that told he was lying, or that this was all somehow a ploy. “Why don’t you come with me to go get it, and we can keep talking on the way there.”

Of course, a clever way for us to talk about the trolls without any questions. Dave was way better at this than I was. The two of us unanimously looked over at Dirk, to see if our shitty misdirection was working. Dirk however, but still quite busy with watching his toast in the toaster. I let out a breath of relief.

Part of me didn’t think he was even listening, much less caring about what he had to say

But before we could walk out of the kitchen and into the living room we heard the doorbell ring loudly. Dirk walked over to open the door as Dave and I watched awkwardly from the side.

Dirk looked through a peephole of their door, sighed, and opened it.

I was thrown into a state of horror as I saw _another_ CIA agent standing there. This was a different one than the one that came to my door. She was a woman of average height, with reddish sort of hair tied back in a practical bun, though she had the same agent aesthetic as the dude who came to my door.

Before she could get a word out or flash her badge, Dirk interrupted her. “No soliciting.”

The woman looked appalled. “Sir, this isn’t-”

“No soliciting. We don’t take solicitors. We have a sign up, can’t you read?” Dirk sighed, very much annoyed.

And before she could protest, Dirk shut the door in her face and locked it without a second thought or ounce of regret.

Dirk turned back around and locked eyes with me and Dave. “People these days, right? Dave, never become a door-to-door salesman when you grow up. If she or somebody else comes back wanting to sell some shit, you go get your sword and tell them to fuck off.”

Dave gave an awkward thumbs-up. “Sounds like a plan.”

As I watched Dirk sit down at the kitchen table, I wondered how it was possible to be so badass and so dense at the same time. Dave had some reason to admire this guy, I had to admit, he was pretty cool.

Without much other comment, and not wanting to be there if the agent came back, Dave and I rushed out of the kitchen.

We passed through Dave’s living room and the staircase that led to the upper story of his house, until we reached the big, sliding glass door that led out to his backyard. Dave struggled to unlatch the lock on the handle, and leaned against it with all his might to push it open. From a combination of his tiredness and the fact that he wasn’t very athletic, Dave wasn’t very strong.

Second we walked onto the back porch and shut the door, Dave turned to me. His expression was panicked.

“The fucking CIA is looking for the trolls?” Dave held his hands to his head in horror.

“They probably found the shipwreck,” I suggested, “I mean, with the news report and the whole ‘meteor shower’ shenanigans, they probably had to go check it out. And guess what happened!”

Dave had started pacing back and forth. “Oh no, this is bad- Roxy better get here soon.”

“We need to check on the trolls and tell them what’s going on,” I said, “It’d be unfair to leave them in the dark. And pretty untrustworthy of us.”

“You’re right,” Dave agreed, “Let’s go check on them.”

\--------------------

The shed was in chaos.

Most all the trolls were standing up, pushing past each other and walking in circles, like they were looking for a lost belonging. They were muttering and talking to each other, in some kind of argument, though they seemed to be so on edge. The trolls appeared to notice me and Dave enter, though most just brushed it off and continued doing what they were doing. Something strange about the shed, though, was that despite all the chaos and movement, the shed seemed notably less populous than before.

“Whoa, whoa, what’s going on here?” I asked, looking around in confusion.

Nepeta, the short girl in green, was the first to respond. “Vriskers and Karkitty are missing!” she cried.

My heart sunk and filled with shock. “What?!”

“Vriska and Karkat must’ve left the shed last night, but now they’re gone and we can’t find them!” Eridan exclaimed. “We haven’t got a clue where they might’ve gone. There’s not a single trace of them, they didn’t leave anything behind. They completely disappeared.”

“The hell, we were gone for a night!” Dave huffed.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Terezi held up her arms, gesturing for everyone to be quiet. “You guys don’t think that Karkat and Vriska… you don’t think they might be… you know.”

Nepeta suggested “In a quadrant!” at the same time Eridan suggested “Dead.”

“I was looking for dead.” Terezi clarified. “There’s no way those two are in a quadrant- _any_ quadrant, it’s just way too weird. But seriously, what if the reason that they haven’t come back yet because they’re… dead.”

The mood of the room complete shifted to quiet gloom. Dave and I looked at each other uncomfortably. I had no clue what a ‘quadrant’ was, but I sure understood what ‘dead’ meant.

I honestly couldn’t believe what was happening. Saving aliens was meant to be fun, even if it was stressful fun. It was meant to be like a sci-fi movie, but now the CIA was onto us, two of the trolls were missing, and there was a chance that they might even be dead. How was I supposed to deal with this, as a sixteen-year-old kid who can’t take constructive criticism without crying?

“Wait! I can check!” Aradia blurted out.

I turned to her, ready to question what this meant, but Dave beat me to it. “Check?”

“Yes!” Aradia clapped her hands together, obviously relieved. “I can talk to all the ghosts around here and see if I can find Karkat or Vriska’s soul! Then we’ll know for sure that they’re alive!”

“You can talk to ghosts?” I asked, not believing her at all.

“Obviously!” She grinned, and she said it with such authority and certainty in her voice that for a second, I took her word for it.

I heard Dave sigh next to me. “Well, I guess it’s worth a try."

Aradia sat down on the floor, cross legged, and most of the trolls sat down with her to watch her. Aradia’s eyes rolled back in her head, and I grimaced from the somewhat uncanny sight. Her mouth dropped open a little, and glowing red icon appeared in front of her forehead, featuring the same sign that was on her shirt.

We sat there in silence watching her. Aradia was blank-faced and unmoving, and we didn’t dare disturb her. Nothing happened as we stared.

Time dragged on. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Forty-five minutes. An hour.

I rested my chin on my hand, and I was starting to get tired. How much longer would we have to watch Aradia ‘talk to ghosts?’ I glanced over at Dave, hoping to share at least an exasperated look of disbelief, but Dave was transfixed on watching the ghost-search.

Aradia opened her eyes with a gasp, like she’d just come up for air after being stuck underwater.

This caused a stir throughout the room.

“What did you find?” Feferi asked quickly, scooted forward, towards Aradia.

“Absolutely no sign of them,” Aradia sighed. “If anything, it’s a relief, because wherever they are we at least know that they’re not dead. Drat, I never would’ve expected human ghosts to be so rude. It’s like they’ve never been spoken to before.”

“They probably haven’t” Dave said, “I mean, humans can’t really talk to ghosts. Some people don’t even believe that they exist.”

Aradia shrugged, and gave a very forced-looking half smile. “Oh, wow, that’s really sad. Humans really are late to the party. I might laugh if this wasn’t such a serious situation.”

“Since when has _that_ stopped you,” Terezi mumbled under her breath.

“But yes,” Aradia went on, “Ghosts are very real, and very rude on this planet. But out of all the ghosts around in this area, there’s not a single troll, much less Karkat and Vriska. Those two are very much alive, like I said, it’s good news, but either way we’re back where we started with no ideas or information.”

“Jesus, I need to tell Jade about this,” Dave muttered, taking out his phone and began typing away.

The trolls began discussing ideas again, and I sat down, waiting for Dave to stop texting.

“Actually,” I interrupted the trolls’ discussion, overcome with sudden realization. “I think I might know what they are! Well, not ‘where,’ but I think I know why they’re not here.”

The trolls stopped talking very abruptly.

“Where?” Gamzee asked suddenly, and I jumped when I heard him, reminding myself that he’d actually been there the whole time. He’d been so silent before now.

"Just earlier today," I stared at the floor, my eyes widening as I thought carefully about my next words. "There was this guy who came to my house, knocking on the door. He was this weird government agent dude, and he demanded to know all about any weird stuff I'd seen or quote en quote 'suspicious individuals.' Of course I said no, who would be stupid enough to say anything else? I ended up annoying him into leaving but I got the gist of what he was saying. You guys were in danger of discovery. At first, I thought they'd just found the wreckage of your guys' spaceship but now that I think about it, they must have found something else, too. I'm not saying that Karkat and Vriska somehow left the shed and got themselves kidnapped by the government… but yeah, I guess that's exactly what I'm saying."

The room went eerily quiet from the initial shellshock of my confession.

“Your _government_ knows that we are here?!” Equius shouted, standing up from the couch in a state of angry fear. Nepeta was quick to stand up with Equius and she put a hand on his arm, like she was ready to calm him if he exploded.

“It wasn’t that they found the ship and are looking for the passengers. They’ve already found both, and they’re looking for more.” I whispered to myself in horror, realizing just how bad this situation was. “Dave, I hope you’re telling Jade this.”

“Already on it.” He assured.

The whole shed was tense and silent.

When I looked around the shed, my eyes landed on Kanaya. She seemed notably upset, with her arms wrapped around herself and her head hung.

I nudged Dave and gestured to her with my head. He upwards-nodded in response, like a secret spy being alerted that the guy standing next to him on a train is _also_ a secret spy. We walked over to Kanaya, ready to try and comfort her, if she was stressed about the whole situation. I couldn’t blame her, I was stressed too.

“What’s wrong?” I questioned.

Kanaya took a deep breath. “This is my fault.”

Dave placed a comforting hand on Kanaya's shoulder, giving a concerned side-eye.

Kanaya looked to be a step and a half away from stressed tears. "This is all my fault, I'm the one that's supposed to be responsible for those two, and now they're gone and lost because of my own foolish stupidity."

"Don't say that," I protested, "How were you supposed to guess they'd disappear?"

"It's my job to guess," Kanaya sniffed, "Because I'm the only one here with some pale shadow of confinent competence, and look what happened when I glanced away from Vriska and Karkat for a few hours; they run off to who-knows-where on an alien planet!"

"Don't blame yourself dude, you literally didn’t do anything," Dave insisted.

Kanaya wrapped her arms around herself. "No, at this point it doesn’t even matter whose fault it is. Vriska and Karkat could be anywhere by now... They must be so scared."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> imagine being the poor CIA agents just going about their day, doing their job, and having to deal with john "no impulse control" egbert and dirk "we don't take solicitors" strider.


	9. This Should Be a Crime Movie - Karkat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're back. whatever did happen to Karkat and Vriska at the end of chapter six?? prepare to find out!

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I sure remembered getting practically blinded by a spotlight shining in my face to wake me up. I hissed and grunted, trying to shrink away from the light as all my senses were overloaded with too much information the process.

It was like a wake up call by the world’s most loud and annoying featherbeast. _‘Cockle doodle doo, bitchass, it’s time to wake up and smell the death sentence!’_

 _‘Fuck you!’_ I pictured myself yelling back at it.

The featherbeast screeched loudly in my head and then disappeared like the shitty hallucination it was. My vision was flooded with spotlight a second time. I reel backward to try and get away from whatever the source was, though I seemed to be stuck in some kind of chair.

I yelled out loud at the light. “Will you STOP THAT?!”

My eyes were shut tighter than they were when I was asleep. Or unconscious. Whatever it was, it was annoying. I tried to lift my hands to rub the tiredness out of my eyes and adjust my vision, but I found that I couldn’t. My arms were stuck. Opening one eye in a very slight, very painful squint, I tried to look down at my arms to see what was holding them in place.

I was certainly in a chair, and my arms were tied down to the side of the chair by rope on my elbows and wrists. Attempting to struggle out of the ropes, I twisted and squirmed in place, and realized that my torso and legs were also tied down to the chair.

“What the hell…?” I whispered to myself, and tried to force my eyes open more, like when you’re trying to see in a dream but you’re about to wake up.

This was no dream, unfortunately.

Why not? I began to wonder, but then I remembered. I couldn’t think of a lot that happened, but I sure as hell recalled some. We left the shed. We walked to the crash. We got… taken? I wasn’t sure but I got knocked out and I couldn’t think of anything after that. We got to the crash site and Vriska told me to run. _Vriska._

 _That_ got my eyes to open all the way, but before I could process my surroundings I was shouting again. “Where’s Vriska?! Where am I?! Get me the hell out of these ropes, you moronic shit-dipped trufflefucks! Let me go, let me…!”

My shoulders sank as I looked around.

Vriska was nowhere in sight, but my concerns for her left my mind quickly when I saw my actual surroundings.

Two big spotlights were pointed at my face, sure enough, but my eyes were able to adjust to see what was behind them. The room was small, grey, and boring. The walls were made of concrete or stone, and they looked dirty and old. The floor and ceiling were exactly the same as the walls, though the wall to my left was almost completely covered by a full sized, floor-to-roof mirror, and I could see my reflection.

My hair was somehow messier than before, and I couldn’t help but notice how beat up I looked. Not that somebody had actually beaten me up, but like I was transported very roughly while unconscious, which was very likely.

Also, my clothes were different. Instead of my black turtleneck and sweatpants, I was wearing a white t-shirt and long white pants that were so boring Kanaya would’ve shook her head in shame. I shivered, but not because my outfit was a nightmare. Had it always been this cold in here, or was I just noticing it now?

I exhaled sharply, and the hair in front of my face flew up a little. I was getting distracted from what was at hand.

But behind the spotlights, there were three figures standing.

The worst of my worries were that I’d been captured by the empire again, but that wasn’t the case. The figures standing there were hornless, tan-skinned, and shorter than most adult trolls. For sure, these guys were humans. 

Two of the figures had helmets on and stood guard at a big metal door that looked downright impossible to open. The third, who wasn’t wearing a helmet, was standing between the spotlights, looking directly at me. His face was was wrinkled, scarred, and stern, with piercing blue eyes and brown hair. I wrinkled my nose in confusion when I noticed that there seemed to be hair growing on the man’s chin and jaw. At this point, I had no idea what was normal for humans, but trolls didn’t have hair like that.

He opened his mouth and began to talk, but it made a strange, unidentifiable babbling noise. He made this noise for a while. His mouth was moving like he was talking, but I couldn’t understand a single word.

After he finished, he stared at me like he expected a response.

“What?” I mumbled, not having the strength to yell at him. God, my throat hurt. And my back, and neck, and head, and everything.

The guard guy starting making the weird noise again, glaring at me with more ferocity than before.

“I don’t understand a single thing you’re saying.” I shook my head at him, unimpressed.

We looked at each other, and while the guard retained some of his war-wary ferocity, but he also looked incredibly confused. As I looked at him, I decided to name him ‘Hairface.’ That seemed like a fitting name. I broke away from his gaze, not wanting to be involved in some human staring contest for dominance. I didn’t have the time for that, as this point. My eyes flicked down to my arms tied to the chair. I was able to move my hand just a little, in fact it was _just_ enough wiggle room to-

I successfully flipped off Hairface.

He was not amused.

But as I focused on my hand with a tiny sense of satisfaction, I noticed something missing about my hand. As I looked down at my fourth finger, I noticed that my translator ring was gone.

Oh, that explained it. I didn’t have my translator ring, and this guy was just speaking human. Of course I couldn’t understand. But, I wondered why they took it. Maybe they thought it was somehow weaponized, or held some kind of unmatchable value. Or maybe they just wanted to act like assholes and took it for no reason.

I actually said, “Oh,” out loud. “I don’t have my translator ring. I can’t- I can’t understand you, you idiot, shut up now.”

The guy clearly didn’t get what I was saying, and ignored my attempts at communication.

Hairface sighed in a defeated way and muttered something under his breath, before taking a walkie talkie looking thing from his belt. He pressed a button and spat a few words into it. A scratchy sort of reply came from the device.

Hairface turned around and barked some more human words to the guards with the helmets.

Both helmet-guys rushed forward, brandishing some very intimidating guns. It unsettled me, I noticed the way these guard held their guns was very reminiscent of the way Erdian held _his_ gun when he was getting ready to attack. I tried my best to ignore my shaking hands and the lump in my throat.

Before I knew it, Hairface started untying the ropes that were keeping me fastened to the chair. By the time all the ropes were off, the guns in my back prompted me to stand up.

Hairface took a sack made of shabby brown fabric from somewhere- I wasn't sure where it came from, it looked like it just appeared in his hand.

"Oh, no you don't. I've watched enough crime movies to know this is top top-class B.S." I glared, leaning away from the sack.

I tried to step backwards, but my legs hit the chair, and my back hit the guns that were still pointed at me.

The bag was forced over my head so I couldn't see a thing.

I shook my head violently to get the sack off of my face, but it was no use. I felt the barrel of a gun get nudged into my back. I sucked in breath of fear, and started walking foreward. Hairface was vaguely leading me by the shoulder, but I was still stumbling and unable to see what the hell was going on.

My shoulder was yanked forward, and I started walking.

Was this what Terezi had to do all the time? I had a new level of respect for her. Well, maybe it was easier with a cane.

Occasionally, I felt the barrel of the gun get nudged into one of my shoulder blades, as if they though I'd forget about it if they didn't threaten to shoot me every five seconds. I recoiled slightly whenever I felt it, and shrank away from the threat.

The guards were talking to each other along the way, but of course I didn't understand at all.

Eventually, we stopped walking. Both guard took hold of my shoulders so I couldn't move, and a third (probably Hairface), ripped the sack off my face.

I was looking at a big room of sturdy glass with a thick metal door. I felt a kick in the back of my calf, and I grunted and walked inside.

"Karkat...?"

I turned my head around at the sound of a familiar, Alternian voice.

And there, with two guards holding her shoulders looking very beat up, was Vriska. She was wearing the same blank white clothes as me, and she seemed to be struggling to keep her balance as she glowered at me. Her entire face was contorted into a grimace, probably because her glasses were gone and she presumably couldn't see a thing.

She was standing only a few feet away from me, by the same entrance into the glass room.

"Vriska?" I called back, confused but relieved. "What the fuck is going on?"

"Hell if... I know." she mumbled back, her words slurring.

The guard pushed us into the room with guns pointed. I walked in without protest, since I didn't want to get shot. Vriska, as it seemed was having a more difficult time, tripping over herself as she walked in.

The metal door shut with a deafening slam.

I winced, looking over my shoulder as if I was ready to cuss out the door for scaring me.

Vriska grunted quietly, and fell to her knees in a huff. As her scrunched up face relaxed, I noticed how her eyes were glazed over and dilated. I realized in an instant of momentous horror that she was acting a lot like Gamzee acted directly after taking his daily sopor dose.

"Oh shit, don't tell me they drugged you." I groaned, burying my face in my hands.

"Sorry." she mumbled, staring at the ground and still struggling to sit up without toppling over. "Didn't realize... anyone'd be there. Sensed their thoughts, with m-mind control. Didn't know, mm'sorry."

I crossed my arms, figuring that I still wanted to be angry. "Yeah, you should be! Look at this hellhole you got us into."

"Sorry," she repeated, croaking out the word before starting to cough.

"Good! You're sorry!" I nodded, "For once, and your life, you've actually taken responsibility for some shit you've caused. What is this? Character development already? Well, I'll be damned! This just in, Vriska Serket has just announced that she is, in fact, sorry! What a..." My voice trailed off when my eyes landed on Vriska's left shoulder. "Oh shit."

"What's wrong?" She asked, looking at me with pain in her face.

"Your arm." I stared down at her shoulder. At the stump where her robotic arm used to be. "What happened to your arm?"

"Y'know what happen." Vriska sighed, clearly not processing what was going on, "Terezi cut it off, you had a... whole rant to me like, a day, or whatever, ago. R'member?"

"No, no, no, not that!” I shook my head, “The robot arm! The one you've had for years that Equius made for you, it's gone! The humans must've taken it!"

"Whah?" She looked down at the metal stump where some scraps of wires and a bit of metal framing remained. Some of the drugged exhaustion in her face drained away, replaced with utter horror. "Oh, no, Equius is gonna kill me!"

"Don't worry," I assured dryly, "The humans will kill us first, so Equius won't get the chance."

Vriska slumped down, collapsing on the the floor. "Great, just great."

I stepped back from Vriska, deciding to let her have her existential crisis/human sleeping drug hangover. 

This time I was using to examine the cell we were in. All of the walls where made of glass, and I could see outside into the big warehouse of the facility. Inside the cell itself, the floors were the same grey concrete as everywhere else, it it was really cold. The door was bolted shut with about a million heavy locks on the outside, and there was no way I could break it.

I turned on my heel and walked to the cell’s other side.

On the other side, there was a strange, almost couch looking thing in the corner.

It was a rectangular, elevated surface, like a very, _very_ weird table. It looked big enough for me to lay down on and have my whole body fit on it.

I tested the surface, pushing down on it with my hand. It was stiff, but sort of elastic, and the materials piled on top of it was like the the big sheets fabric Kanaya used for sewing, though these sheets weren't at all colorful; they were a plain, slightly dirty offwhite. It was no cacoon, but it was better than sleeping on the floor again.

Vriska was still sitting against the wall, one-armed and drugged, and she looked over at me. "Whadda you doing?"

"Going to sleep." I said, and I climbed on top of the odd fabrics.

"On the human... whatever that is?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, now shut up."

"Whatever," Vriska muttered. "I'll be here. On the floor. Like someone who isn't a coward. Which is what you are; a coward"

"Okay, Vriska. I don't care, so shut up." I frowned at her, and laid down on the fabric surface.

It was surprisingly comfortable, almost like a couch but with one big cushion. I shut my eyes and crossed my arms.

I went to sleep looking forward to my dreams. After all, I had an old dead guy to yell at.

\--------------------

When I woke up in the blank expanse of grey with the watery, reflective floors, not only did I know it was a dream, but it was exactly the dream I wanted.

**_I see that you’ve returned._ **

“Oh, there he is!” I shouted, glaring up at the sky like I expected to see the Signless there, flipping me off or something. “And don’t phrase it like that, bastard, it’s not like I have a choice what kind of bullshit my thinkpan decides to dream up on _this_ fateful night! And boy, you better believe I’ve got an earful for you.”

**_I couldn’t expect any less, could I?_ **

“Nope! And I’m not sorry for being mad at you for getting me kidnapped by humans, dumbfuck. Why in the world would you think it would be a good idea to wake me up, just so I could get me and Vriska snatched, where our friends have no clue where we are!”

**_I’m not omniscient, it’s not like I was aware this would happen. This is less than ideal for both of us, believe me._ **

“Snappy, are we?” I grumbled, sighing and staring at my feet. “And I think we’re _far_ past ‘less than ideal’ territory. It’s safe to say that this whole thing is a fucking disaster.”

**_With that in mind, perhaps we should just get this over with._ **

“Oh no, mister, I want answers!” I huffed, “You better explain why the hell you’re talking in my dreams in my head. I’ve had my fair share of weird bullshit, but this is starting the cross the line. So, whatever, give me your existential bible study dream, but I want answers!”

**_So let me finish._ **

“Fine.”

The water in the ground drained away again, which made me uneasy, though when I fell down into the dark abyss, I braced myself. I didn’t scream, but I clenched my fists and shut my eyes tights, waiting for the tension to break.

A jolt shot through my knees like I’d landed on my feet rather messily. Cautiously, I opened my eyes.

I was standing in a forest. It was full of teals and browns and earthy tones that were a treat for  my eyes after spending time in that empty, grey facility with no colors or organic shapes. Moonlight spilled through the trees, and I looked up to see the moons directly overhead. It was midnight on Alternia. Old Alternia, probably, if the Signless was still telling me the story of his prehistoric life.

The way the dream was structured was different than the last. Less movie-like, and more as if I were a ghost or some kind of spectator in the world. The audio was still a bit muted, and the everything looked was like a oil painting- almost animated instead of real.

From where I stood in the forest, I had a good view of a largish berry bush. Upon closer inspection, there was a pair of feet sticking out from the bush; someone was hiding in it.

_“Meulin? Meulin, you win, you can come out now! I give up- I can’t find you.”_

I looked around for the source of the voice. It was muffled, like I was listening to it underwater.

I turned around to see the Signless standing there, about as old as he was in the last dream when he made the necklaces. Seemingly, he was no older than five- far younger than me. He also looked like an oil painting, and it only made the dream feel more surreal and dreamlike.

He looked worried, walking around almost frantically. _“Meulin, you know Mother will get upset if you get lost, and then I’ll get in trouble. Please come out…”_ He sighed sadly.

I looked back at the bush, but looking from where the Signless was standing.

There was a pair of sharp yellow eyes peering out from the bush, alight with glee.

Suddenly, whoever was hiding in the bush leapt out, knocking over the young Signless in an overly enthusiastic tackle-pounce. The Signless cried out in surprise as he fell on his back. The troll who jumped from the bush was a five-sweep-old girl with long hair, dressed in olive green clothes.

The girl giggled loudly. _“I scared you, Kankitty! I got you good!”_

I was temporarily thrown for a loop as I noticed how the girl’s voice sounded so similar to Nepeta’s. Their purrbeast ear-shaped horned even looked the same! She was using the same kind of nicknames! But this girl had much longer hair, and Nepeta had more muscle.

The girl stood up and brushed herself off, and offered a hand to a sort of grumbly Signless. He took her hand, and stood up beside her.

**_My beloved Disciple. We met when we were young, and she stayed by my side for the rest of my time. Along with that, she was the love of my life._ **

I stopped myself from groaning at that. I figured that I’d never hear the end of it, and I was more than prepared for the Signless judged my taste in romance movies again if I dared to do something like that. So, I stayed quiet, watching the painting-like scape. It wasn’t moving like real life, either, or even like an animation. It moved more like an incomplete storyboard.

Before I could make a comment on it, the scenery changed.

It showed the Signless and the… Disciple? I guess? They were adults now- young adults. The Disciple was holding the Signless’s hand, and with the other hand, she was clutching an iron pendant around her neck. It was another one of the Signless medallions, like the one that the Dolorosa had received. Standing next to each other, the two of them looked happy and in love. Like a movie, but more real and genuine.

“So, you were matesprits?” I suggested.

**_Oh no, we were far more than that. It was a love so strong, that some say it surpassed that of the quadrants._ **

“Wait, so you…” my voice went very quiet. “You were… quadrant blurring?”

**_If that’s what you call it these days, then sure. Back in my time it was just called illegal. But, there wasn’t much of a test for something to be illegal when it came to relationships. Even quadrants between lowbloods and highbloods was frowned upon, and albeit our quadrants are anything but perfect, I’m happy that’s more accepted nowadays._ **

“No lowblood-highblood relationships?” I wrinkled up my nose in surprise. “Damn, you just killed about half of Nepeta’s ships, and almost all of my favorite rom-coms.”

The Signless laughed.

**_Well, I should tell you more about the Disciple, shouldn’t I?_ **

A flash of bunch of different images flew through the dreamscape.

The Signless and Disciple were very young again, and each of them held one of the Dolorosa’s hands. They were pushing past a crowd, trying to get to what looked like a checkpoint station at the gates of a big city. There were two intimidating Empire soldiers letting people- they looked like refugees- into the city. The Dolorosa pulled the young Signless close to her and covered him with her cloak, and the Disciple moved to walk right in front of him, so that he was concealed from the soldier’s view.

Now it was the Disciple, sitting next to the Signless, adults once more. The Signless looked like he was preaching to a crowd about something, and the Disciple appeared to be _furiously_ writing down every word the he said in a leather-bound book.

The Disciple carefully arranging firewood in a forest, in a perfect cone shape, only to see it topple over. The Signless and Dolorosa watched from a few feet away, and all three of them laughed when the firewood fell.

The Disciple giving a bowl of strange looking stew to a scrawny, timid goldblood I hadn’t seen before.

The Disciple and the Signless kissing.

**_What quite possibly matters most is what happened after my life ended._ **

The scene changed to one that I vaguely recognized from the last dream. An unpleasant one too, much to my dismay. It was the place where the Signless had been executed.

The Signless’s limp body was hanging from shackles, very much dead, a distance away. I felt a knot grow in my stomach and I quickly looked away. Away from that, I saw the Disciple, kneeling on the ground, clutching a tattered grey cloth soaked in candy red blood. She held it up to her face, and I realized that she was sobbing into it; the red blood mixed with her green tears.

A tall, indigo blooded man stood in front of her, dressed in black and blue. On his shoulder, was a shoulder plate emblazoned with the Empress’s sign. He was broad-shouldered and his face was jaded. He held a black longbow, notched with wicked arrow, and it was pointed right at the Disciple.

**_She was sentenced to an execution along with me, and she was given no glory, trial, or chance to fight back._ **

The Disciple looked up at the man, tears streaming down her face hopelessly.

He stared back, but the longer he looked, the more his face softened. His hands trembled on the arrow, and he couldn’t look her in the eye.

**_But as the Executor looked down at my dear Disciple, he couldn’t bring himself to release that arrow._ **

The Executor shook his head, like he was trying to snap out of a trance, and then lowered the longbow, and the arrow went uselessly still. He looked down at the grieving Disciple, with unmistakable pity and guilt in his face, and mouthed one word to her. _“Go.”_

She didn’t need an invitation. She sprung up from her hunched stance, wrapped the cloth around herself and _ran,_ I mean, _seriously_ booked it out of there. The soldiers were in chaos, yelling and trying to chase after her, but she was far too quick. With much more yelling and confusion, the anger was direct back to the Executor, who stood silent and willing and they put him in shackles.

**_All because he hesitated, because he couldn’t kill her, he allowed her to escape death._ **

“Alright then,” I crossed my arms, turning to watch as the Disciple ran off past the horizon. “That’s great and all, but what happened to the Executor?”

**_He was put on trial for treason. Because there was no direct evidence to his treason, they charged him with ‘failure to complete his orders’ and banished him instead of just killing him on the spot._ **

“I didn’t realize that legislacerators _needed_ evidence to sentence him to be culled.”

**_They did, at the time. The justice system was new, and flawed. After this incident, however, they primarily used trial and justice to execute criminals rather than using blueblood executors._ **

I hummed thoughtfully, and admitted to myself that hearing a history lesson from the Signless was a lot more interesting than hearing it from Eridan. Or books.

**_After a few days, the Disciple and Executor found each other again, deep in the wilderness._ **

The oil painting scene showed a campfire inside a dark cave. The Disciple looked older, and grief-stricken. There were several mounds of books surrounding her, and across from her, sat the Executor.

She leaned towards him, holding her Signless necklace in her hands, and placed it around his neck.

**_They stayed with each other in a cave for many perigrees, and the Disciple taught him all of my teachings, to the point where he was quite the expert, since he heard it from a first hand account. Eventually, though, the Disciple grew too overcome with grief about me and couldn’t stand the sight of the Executor. She sent him away with only her pendant to remember her by._ **

The Disciple finished fastening the necklace around his neck. _“Pass this on to someone with the same heart as my love,”_ she whispered, _“And with the same potential. Teach them to do great things, and the spirit of the One Who Suffered will live on”_

The scene changed, but my vision went blank. There was nothing for me to see.

I cleared my throat loudly. “Did the Executor ever find the troll the Disciple was looking for? I mean, that request was pretty fucking specific.”

**_Oh, he did. He certainly did._ **

I saw the cave again, though it wasn’t as dark, and the campfire was put out. Other then that, the cave looked almost exactly the same. 

I looked to the entrance of the cave, and saw the Executor standing there. He was wearing peasant’s clothes in place of his imperial armor, he had no mask or goggle hiding his face, and he had absolutely nothing indicating that he was a highblood. His long hair was pulled back, and he carried a knapsack of sorts in one hand. The other hand was firmly clasped onto the shoulder of a smaller troll standing next to him.

The troll that stood next to him couldn’t have been older than six sweeps. He was scruffy and a little greasy, and otherwise looked like he hadn’t taken a bath in weeks. He had bull horns on the sides of his head, much like Tavros’ horns, but the strangest thing about him was the sunset orange butterfly wings protruding from his back. He looked frustrated, and kept trying to tug away from the Executor, flapping his wings uselessly.

**_He was a scammer and a thief as a child, and later the leader of a powerful rebellion. His title would be the Summoner, and like me, he was a mutant who wished for change. Though, I will admit that his methods, albeit more effective, were far different than mine._ **

The scene changed to the Summoner with hair dyed bright red, being handed the Disciple’s necklace. He took it with a big smile on his face, and clasped it around his neck.

“Oh, hey! I think I heard Vriska talk about this guy at some point!” I exclaimed, nodding as I recognized the name. “He was the revolution guy that her pirate ancestor Mindfang was matesprits with, and they started a revolution together! Yeah, that was the reason Vriska wanted to date Tavros when we were, like, six. God, that was uncomfortable just fucking experiencing that.”

**_The revolution was going on far before he met Mindfang, but yes, you get the idea._ **

The scene changed to show an adult Summoner with his wings spread out, flying into what looked like a very violent battlefield.

**_More lives were lost in that war than had ever been lost in history. Though he was ultimately unsuccessful, he sent quite the message to the Empire. After all, he served in the imperial army as a spy, gathering information before betraying them and starting his revolt. He was, if nothing else, a military genius and excellent leader._ **

And my vision went blank again. I sighed deeply and scrunched up my faces in frustration, like I’d just been watching the best part of a movie, and somebody turned off the TV.

**_All these greats failed in their hope to defeat the empire._ **

“You don’t say.”

I felt the ground become more solid beneath my feet as I faded back into the grey expanse of boring void. I huffed, and felt more tired than I was when I was awake.

**_But perhaps, you can succeed, Karkat. This is why I’ve spoken to you in your dreams, because you could free your people- our people, from treachery._ **

“What the fuck is your point?” I asked skeptically.

**_My point being, couldn’t tragedies like this be avoided, if you found away to defeat the Empress. Perhaps putting a more benevolent troll in her place._ **

“Are you…?” my voice trailed off at I realized what he was asking. “Are you trying to tell me to try to kill the Condesce? The fucking Empress for thousands upon thousands of sweeps? Are you out of your goddamned cluckbeast-nook thinkpan?!”

**_Don’t overreact, Karkat, I’m trying to help you. Think about it; not only would that put your friends into almost complete safety, but it would benefit all trolls. Everywhere. Millions of lives would be saved, and all it takes is you._ **

“What the you even talking about?” I cried, “I can’t do that, you know I can’t do that! I’m no military genius, or magically redeemed executioner, or- or religious paragon! I’m not you!”

**_I don’t expect you to be me because you are not me; you are something far different, and frankly, you have a greater advantage. You have a power- a power of choice, to act or not, and to keep your friends safe or not. Whatever you choose won’t affect me in any way, so know that at my core, I am doing this because you deserve a happy ending._ **

“I can’t be happy if I’m a messed up little mutant blooded _child_ that’s going to die in an underground alien facility!” I hung my head, staring the ground as it began to blur.

He sighed wisely, and I felt a breeze of warm air blow over my face, almost like his way of comforting me from the grave.

**_Little Karkat, whoever said that you were going to die?_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave comments y'all!! i crave any feedback, questions, or grammar/spelling corrections you may have. i love every one of you and will do my best to reply to all of them! your support keeps me going, and i can't stress how much i appreciate you guys.


	10. The World’s Worst Slumber Party - Rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back and better than ever, and we've finally got a new POV on our hands. It's lesbian time, babey.

The trolls had brought six duffel bags full of their belongings, and a third of them were just for Kanaya’s clothes.

For the possessions that the other  _ eleven _ trolls brought, consisted of one or two changes of clothes for each troll (the same clothes, I might add. The whole 'trolls think fashion is stupid' schtick was being reinforced). All the rest was a very odd assortment of belongings, from what I saw. Some makeup, jewelry, magic 8 balls, hexagon-shaped DVDs, face paint, wall paint, empty snack wrappers, odd bits of technology, actual real life weapons, chalk, and a couple bicycle horns.

All of the bags were piled at the front door, sitting limply, full of incredibly peculiar items. While they’d be brought to their bedrooms later, right now they were at the door

Earlier this morning, before all the trolls had been driven to the house, a lot had happened.

Oh, yes, it had been very eventful.

Jade had tentatively showed my mother the text conversation with Dave to explain to her was going on.

Once Mother finished reading the text conversation, the color drained from her face in shock and disbelief. "What do you mean 'missing'?!" she exclaimed.

Jade shushed her, gesturing to Sollux and Tavros, who were still sitting in the kitchen, maybe twenty feet away. Luckily, it seemed like the two weren’t paying attention, and were talking to each other calmly, as Sollux was drinking coffee straight from the coffee pot.

"Oh, sorry." she adjusted her voice, afraid the boys would be frightened by the bad new- at least when it was coming from someone they didn't trust. "What do you mean 'missing'?"

"According to Dave," I put in, also speaking quietly, "the two trolls Vriska and Karkat left the shed in the dead of night, and didn't return the next morning. From what they know, the two are not dead; they somehow have evidence of that. But, they hypothesize that they might've been found and kidnapped by the CIA investigating the trolls shipwreck."

Mother muttered something under her breath, and sighed. "Damn, I really should've expected this. Oh, well, I'll hack the CIA later to find out for sure."

She talked about her plans to hack into government database as casually one would talk about their plans to take a trip to the grocery store. Somehow, it was more normal for Mother to hack into classified files that it was for her to go to the grocery store.

It was just something she did, like, every other week and I was starting to think she did it for fun, and not just for work.

"So," Mother continued, "There's only eight trolls I need to pick up, now. There was twelve to start, we've got Sollux and Tavros here, and two trolls are missing. That leaves eight." She nodded to herself. "Alrighty, I'll take the minivan to go pick up the rest.”

"Good plan." I chided.

Jade frowned, staring at the ground, looking almost a little sad. “Wait a minute. Look, I… I really want to help you guys out, but it’s already 11:30, and my grandpa is going to want me home soon. So, since I’ve gotta go, do you guys think you can manage without me?”

“Of course, Jade, there’s no need to worry,” I assured her. “I’ll keep you updated throughout the day to make sure you won’t miss out on any important developments.”

“Thanks, I’ll text my grandpa to come and pick me up.”

Jade’s grandpa arrived at the house promptly after that, and Jade was able to be safely taken home. Mother didn’t want to leave until she made sure Jade’s grandpa picked her up, but once she left, Mother was able to leave as well. Before she did, she told me several things. 1. Order two to three large pizzas from whatever pizza place struck my fancy. 2. Make sure that the bedrooms that the trolls will be sleeping in are relatively tidy. 3. Try to find something, anything- board games, video games, television- that would keep the trolls entertained and occupied. Make sure they won’t resort to fighting or destroying the house as a form of entertainment.

After Mother left, I walked into the kitchen, where Sollux and Tavros were still sitting and talking. As I walked in, Sollux looked up at me.

“Where’s Roxy and Jade?” he asked.

“Jade went back to her house, and my mother has left to pick up your other friends from the shed.” I explained. “I’m going to order pizza so that your friends don’t raid our pantry for anything vaguely resembling food.”

Sollux seemed satisfied enough with that response, but didn’t say anything.

I raised my phone to be level to my eyes, and leaned against the kitchen counter. After some bit of research, I found the phone number of a local pizza place, a delivery from which would be here quickly and inconspicuously. I quickly copy-pasted the number into my phone, and gave it a call. Making calls always made me a lot more nervous as a kid than they did now, though I knew that some of my friends were practically incapable of making calls.

An overtly cheerful, customer service voice picked up my call. “This is Rick’s Pizza, how can I help you?”

“Hello, I’d like to order three large cheese pizzas.” I said, looking over at the troll boys, who were watching me curiously.

“Hosting a party, ma’am?”

I hummed, looking over to the front door, and back at the trolls. “Let’s go with that.” He laughed cheesily, while ultimately sounding completely dead inside. After a pause, I corrected myself. “Actually, make that  _ four  _ pizzas.”

Once I’d provided my address, I hung up the phone, knowing the pizza was on its way. I was rushed to complete the other tasks of tidying up the guest rooms. I took a great deal of time to locate some multiplayer video games, and set them out on the table in front of the television and game consoles. I could only find one board game—that being Monopoly—but somehow I didn’t think that would encourage the trolls  _ not _ to fight. That game was infuriating enough on its own, without being played by a group of on-edge aliens with a violent sounding backstory.

“Excuse me,” I said to Tavros, who was now sitting in an armchair in the living room.

“Yeah?” he returned, looking a little surprised by my sudden appearance.

“Would you happen to know how much luggage your friends brought with you?” I sat down at the couch across from him, and pretended to examine my nails. “Or at least what kind of things you brought.”

“Oh, uh, well,” he frowned, seemingly deep in thought. “We brought some clothes, but um, Kanaya brought most of them. Some people probably just brought their favorite, uh, sentimental stuff, and their weapons. That might overlap, actually, but I think you get the point.”

“Weapons?”

“Uh huh,” he shrugged, “What about it? Nobody in their right mind would be caught dead without some means of self defense.”

I bit my lip, suddenly feeling a bit unprepared for everything I was meant to be preparing for.

It wasn’t long before Mother arrived back home with all the rest of the trolls in tow. I heard the distinct sound of the garage door opening, and looking up from my knitting when I heard it. From what I gathered, the two trolls we’d first taken for medical treatments were on the quieter side, and when it came to the whole group. I expected that the house was going to get a lot louder, and a lot more chaotic.

I stood up from my chair, bracing myself for the influx of yelling alien teenagers. The door to the garage swung open, and all eight trolls seemed to be fighting over who got to enter the house first. The winner of the fight was Nepeta- she was tiny, and wore a long green overcoat. She cackled triumphantly as she shoved past her friends into the house. One of the other trolls, who looked very concerned at Nepeta’s rowdiness (I believe his name was Equius), was carrying four of the trolls’ duffel bags- two in each arm. As for the other two bags, Terezi was holding one of them, and Kanaya was holding the other.

Upon hearing the commotion, Sollux and Tavros were quick to walk back into the room to see their friends.

Almost instantly, the two boys were tackled by Aradia, the girl with messy hair in the long black skirt. Sollux tensed up and made a weird noise in surprise, and relaxed after realizing what was happening, and Tavros just laughed fondly. Aradia turned back around, with her arms draped over the shoulders of the other two trolls.

“I’m so glad to see that my favorite boys are okay!” Aradia grinned widely.

She wrapped Sollux in a tight, affectionate hug, and Sollux seemed to be struggling- or at least pretending to struggle to breathe. “AA, you’re crushing me!”

“That’s my job, silly!” she ruffled his hair, and released him from the hug.

The trolls began greeting each other in a thankfully mostly-calm way, catching the others up on what happened while they hadn’t seen each other. Sollux and Tavros talked about how big the house was and what human ‘doctors’ were. But, it wasn’t even thirty seconds into the discussion before Sollux looked around, confused, and said;

“Where’s KK?”

A hush fell over the whole group, uncomfortable and a little bit dreary. Even Aradia’s smile fell, looking over at her friend pityingly.

“Where is KK?!” Sollux repeated, notably more panicked sounding.

Kanaya cleared her throat, and stepped forward, looking between Sollux and Tavros. She sighed, crossing her arms across her chest. “I’m sorry, but there’s some bad news. Karkat and Vriska disappeared last night.”

I’d talked to Kanaya a few nights ago when my mother and I met the trolls for the first time. She was eloquently spoken and polite when I exchanged words with her then, but now she looked stressed and mournful. She still managed to retain her perfect posture and makeup, and upheld a face that I had to admit was rather pretty.

“Disappeared?” Sollux echoed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that they left the storage shed in the middle of the night, and didn’t return.” Kanaya explained gently. “After some investigation and speaking to the other humans, we’ve determined that they were… taken by the human government. There’s no way to tell yet where they are, but that’s not all we know. We believe the humans must’ve found the wreckage of our escape pod, and later found Karkat and Vriska wandering around- it might’ve even been at separate intervals, we don’t know. But… they’re not here. I’m sorry, I really am.”

“Don’t worry, there’s no way they’re dead, I checked!” Aradia placed a comforting hand on Sollux’s shoulder, but he shrugged it off as he stared at the ground.

Sollux’s eyes shut tightly, and red and blue sparks flicked out from under his eyelid, hunching his shoulders in anger.

“Sollux, I know it’s scary…” Feferi stepped forward, nearer to Sollux.

He turned on his heel and stormed away.

I frowned as I watched him leave- he seemed much more upset about the disappearances than any of the other trolls did, though that might’ve just been because he found out late. It could’ve been in the form of some kind of twisted guilt, since he wasn’t there to help or try and stop what had happened. Feferi looked like she was ready to try and stop him from running off, and comfort him instead, but Aradia raised her hand in a  _ ‘stop’  _ motion before Feferi could say anything

“Just give him some space,” Aradia said. “We’re all a little shaken up from what happened, you can hardly blame him anyway.”

That was when Mother walked in from the garage to see the tense, weirdly silent group of trolls. She looked around, confused in a way that said  _ ‘this is weird, but I’m not complaining.’  _ She turned over to me, and gave me an encouraging smile.

“Why don’t you all bring your stuff into the living room?” she suggested.

It didn’t take long for the trolls to get settled in the living room, and I turned on the TV to a random channel to keep them occupied. If anything, watching TV would be good for them- it might be able to help them get an idea of human culture without us needing to explain it to them. I placed their duffel bags by the front door where they all could see them, and we’d move them to their rooms later.

The pizza arrived soon after, where Mother answered to door and made sure the keep the trolls out of sight from the delivery boy.

I was sitting in the living room, eating pizza with ten aliens, and sending pictures to the group chat with me, Jade, Dave, and John. It almost felt like a party, and the whole thing felt so unreal and silly, of doing something so domestic in a scenario that could not have been less domestic. Somehow, I was having fun, and the trolls were too.

Even though Sollux didn’t show up until later, and seemed pretty set on acting bitter and upset, he managed to crack a smile at some point through the whole thing.

As for me, I had smiled more than I had in a while. The only thing that could’ve made it better was if John, Dave, and Jade were there too. Even then, they were with me, in a way that I couldn’t explain in my pizza-laden, sugar-high state.

\--------------------

The day was action-packed, to say the very least.

It seemed that by the end of it all, eating pizza for breakfast and dinner, the trolls had tired themselves out. Mother decided we should  _ all _ start getting ready for bed. I helped the trolls carry their bags to their rooms in order to sort things out. Mother had already stated how the rooms would be divided- girls in one room, boys in another, though some of the trolls seemed a little bit confused by this particular division. Eridan had insisted that they should instead be divided by highblood and lowbloods, and at least three people tried to smother him for it.

Now, I decided the best course of action would be to hang out in each of the trolls respective rooms, talk to them, and observe them as they talked to each other. 

I started with the girls’ bedroom, where many of them were sorting through the duffel bags, finding what was their stuff and tossing what  _ wasn’t _ their stuff across the hall, in the vague direction of the other room.

The girls had also been very interested in the bunk bed, which I couldn’t blame them for. Nepeta and Feferi had claimed the top bunk for themselves, leaving the other girls to pull out the trundle from beneath the bottom bunk.

“Hey, guys?” Terezi called very loudly, over the conversation of the room. We all stopped and looked at her.

“Yeah?” Aradia responded, who was in the middle of putting what looked like misshapen fossils onto a nearby shelf. She’d brought by far the weirdest assortment of things.

Terezi stared down at the ground, looking much sadder than the loud, chaotic, cheerful girl that she’d been earlier that day. “I’m not feeling super great in the emotions category, y’know. So, it's fine with you guys, I sort of want to take the alone bed. Since Roxy said that there’d be two pairs of two sharing beds, but I sort of want to be alone, okay?”

“That’s perfectly alright, Terezi,” Kanaya assured, “You can go ahead.”

Terezi grinned. “Great! Thanks.”

Kanaya turned to look back at Aradia. “I assume then that we’ll be sharing a human bed, considering that  _ those  _ two seem pretty intent on sharing,” she gestured over to Feferi and Nepeta, who were talking to each other animatedly on the top bunk.

“Oh! Yeah, that’s all fine,” Aradia replied, and I noticed for the first time how different she looked without her bright red lipstick and eyeliner, which she’d just washed off.

I stole a curious glance at Kanaya. Her calm demeanor in such a situation like was a very admirable quality, one that I didn’t think I would retain if I were in her shoes. She seemed to notice my gaze towards her, and smiled at me. I took ill note of two cartoonishly scary looking fangs that poked out of her smile, as she walked over to me. She sat down beside me, I took a look at the clipboard I held in my hands, which, unfortunately, was completely blank. I’d been far too tired and invested in observing that I hadn’t even taken any notes, which was embarrassing because it was literally the reason I’d decided to hang out in the trolls’ rooms in the first place.

Kanaya began digging through the duffel bag that sat in front of her, digging through random items, candy wrappers, and bright fabrics. She leaned closer to my shoulder, and I did my best to pretend like I didn’t notice, or care.

“Is this some kind of psychoanalyzation method?” Kanaya said teasingly, pointing down at the empty paper on the clipboard.

I subtly looked away to hide my blush. “Oh yes, I’m looking into mind reading. Have any tips?”

“Well, you’d need to ask Vriska when it comes to that.” Kanaya laughed, and I found myself smiling like an idiot when I heard it. “You know, you’re holding up very well in all this. I think that if I was in your place, I’d be panicking left and right!”

“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you!” I exclaimed, and internally slapped myself. No, now she would think I was stalking her. “I mean, well, that may just be because your planet sounds an awful lot scarier than it is around here. The other night, I believe Sollux told me about your empire, and it sounds horribly tyrannical. I’m sorry you had to live like that.”

“It isn’t a big deal, really,” Kanaya shrugged. “It was just how things were. Besides, that’s in the past, and we’re here now. Your sympathy is appreciated, but unnecessary. Not to sound cynical, I do value it.”

“Of course. I understand.” I nodded to her, watching as she continued to dig through the bag.

Finally, she pulled something out of the bag. It was a largeish three-ring-binder, that seemed to be rather full, although to tabs or papers jutted out at the sides. It was unlabeled.

Kanaya frowned down at the binder, looking at it with suspicion, as if it was suspected of wronging her personally. She flipped open to the first page for a glance, and closed it so quickly that I could even see what was inside, though I didn’t try to hard to look. I didn’t want to come off as nosy- that would be even more embarrassing. Kanaya muttered under her breath. “I knew it. Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” she looked up, and smiled again at me. “Please excuse me for a moment, I need to go scold someone.”

She stood up briskly and walked over to the doorway of the room, peering into the hallways. I leaned over from where I was sitting to get a good look at whatever she was doing, or rather, which one of her friends she was scolding.

I could see out of the doorway from where I sat, luckily, and I noticed Tavros just walking out of the room across the hall.

“Ah, just who I was looking for,” Kanaya clapped her hands together and stepped towards him. She held up the three-ring-binder so he could see. “Could you please, if you aren’t busy, tell me what this is?”

Tavros snatched the three-ring-binder out of Kanaya’s hands before she could even finish her sentence. He appeared to answer her question, but he spoke so quietly that I couldn’t even hear what he was saying. Though, as he said, he looked defensive and somewhat embarrassed, before finally putting the binder behind his back so neither Kanaya nor I could see it.

Kanaya sighed loudly. “And, pray tell,  _ why _ did you bring your Fiduspawn cards when you could’ve brought, say extra food?”

“Says you, who brought your entire sewing machine, and enough fabric to fill a whole bag,” He defended, staring at the ground. “And for the record, my hive was on fire while I was grabbing stuff so I was a  _ little bit _ panicked.”

She opened her mouth to say something, and closed it. “Touche.”

Curtly, Kanaya turned back around to walk back to the girls’ room, where I was still sitting, awaiting her return.

“Sorry about that,” she said, hiking up her long skirt to sit back down on the floor.

“Don’t worry, I don’t mind at all. Sometimes that’s just the nature of things with girls like us, or at least when we’re the sensible one among our friends. Those rascals always running off and getting themselves in trouble. It happens far too often for it to not be a consistent issue, you know. Being the mom friend is hard. It’s hard, and no one understands.”

“Oh, certainly, I couldn’t agree more.”

There was an awkward silence that I wished would end.

I stood up, brushing non-existent dust off my skirt. “Well, I’m going over to the other room to take some more notes, if you don’t mind. It was lovely talking with you, Kanaya.”

“Likewise, Rose,” she returned, politely nodding as I began to walk away.

I lingered at the doorway. Waving goodbye to her and giving one last smile, I walked out and crossed the hallway.

I entered the other guest room, and noticed that it was mostly empty. Most of the boys must have been out, brushing their teeth or locating blankets around the house to add to their beds.

I took a seat on the trundle and began organizing my note-taking material, drawing neat lines on the paper, even though I knew it would be mostly unproductive. Next to me, Gamzee was sitting on the bottom bunk, and he looked up confusedly when I began writing.

“And whatcha doing exactly?” he asked.

I’d already come to the conclusion that Gamzee was not very smart, and because of this, I didn’t figure he’d find offense in my curiosity in observing the trolls. “I’m only taking some notes. I figured that with how astoundingly different our species are, I figured it’s only logical to learn plenty about you, and note-taking is a prime component to all types of learning.”

“Oh,” Gamzee blinked, looking like he regretted asking in the first place. “Cool.”

At that point Sollux walked into the room, seemingly still engaged in a conversation with someone still outside “Oh no, you’re not,” He said, and I pretended to write something on my clipboard. “That’s not happening, fishface, not now or ever.”

His attention turned from whoever he was talking to outside to Gamzee, who was still sitting on the bottom bunk, completely unobservant.

“Hey bro,” Gamzee waved in front of Sollux’s face.

“GZ, will you please switch human beds with me?” Sollux asked very quickly, though it sounded like more of a demand than a question. He then went off, talking like an auctioneer with a lisp, so he was hard to understand. “Roxy said she wanted to keep us near each other so she could keep track of us, and the other respiteblocks are somewhere else, apparently, but the only person left to share with is  _ ED.” _ He said ‘ED’ scornfully, like he was spitting mud out of his mouth. “And not to be dramatic, or any shit, but I would literally rather die than sleep next to Eridan, of all fucking people. So, will you  _ please _ switch with me?”

Gamzee squinted; his three brain cells appeared to be working very hard to process what this meant. “Yeeaaa…Nah.”

Sollux tensed, as if Gamzee had just hit him with a brick, but the brick was instead that single word. “The  _ hell  _ do you  _ mean, _ ‘nah’?! Why not?”

“Oh, y’know,” Gamzee shrugged, looking away. “I think you two motherfuckers really gotta work out your differences, since you be arguing all the time. You two just gotta sit down, and work it out! Get your chill on, and spend some quality motherfucking time to be getting to know each other, man.”

Tavros chose this time to finally limp into the room, with a toothbrush in his hand. “I think, the only thing they’ll be ‘getting to know each other’ about, is what the other’s  _ mouth _ tastes like, since they’re just gonna stay up late hatesnogging!”

Both Tavros and Gamzee burst into laughter, and Sollux’s eyes sparked with obvious rage.

“For the _ last time _ ,” Sollux was yelling now, “We’re not in fucking spades!”

Gamzee looked at him for a while before another malicious grin spread across his face. “But you be fucking in spades.”

“That’s it!” Sollux stomped on the ground and threw a punch blindly in front of him, barely missing Gamzee, who jumped out of the way of the fist coming toward him. He sprung off the bed and ran to the other side of the room, cackling the whole way.  I stood up and dropped my clipboard, ready to stop the possible impending fight. From what the girls mentioned, there had been a lot of fights just in the past couple weeks, and everyone was prepared for another one.

Luckily, the conflict fizzled out as soon as Gamzee got away, and the two broke eye contact.

Sollux grumbled something incoherently, and sat down on the lower bunk.

Now, the other two boys walked into the room after brushing their teeth. Equius and Eridan didn’t say anything, though Eridan made a scoffing noise upon sight of Sollux.

I jotted down some actual notes now. From the way the trolls were speaking, the concept of same-sex couples didn’t seem abnormal at all- they were teasing each other just like human teenagers would for having a crush on someone, though admittedly, the way they were expressing the crush was clearly much different. I was quite pleased at realizing this, as any young lesbian would be. Also, I made sure to keep note of Sollux, who’d seemed much more on-edge ever since he found out about the disappearance of his friends.

“Excuse me.” Equius muttered, standing in front of me awkwardly. He was holding an armful of blankets.

I stood up. “Sorry,” and moved out of the way so he could set up the blankets on the trundle.

Gamzee seemed to have gathered the courage to walk back to the bed, climbing up the ladder to the top bunk, now next to Tavros. He cast a wary eye at the still irritated looking Sollux. Sollux however, didn’t seem to care about this, as he was rather busy having an uncanny staring contest with Eridan. I wondered who was winning.

Sollux lost said staring contest to turn to Gamzee and Tavros. “If you ask me,” Sollux started, speaking at a normal volume for once.

“No one asked.” Eridan hissed.

“If you ask me,” he repeated. I was finding it easier to understand his lisp now that I’d heard him talking so much. “It seems like  _ you  _ two,” He pointed at Gamzee and Tavros, “Aren’t letting me switch with you to avoid Eridan, all because you two just wanna share a bed with each  _ other.” _

That sent an uncomfortable silence through the room. Seriously uncomfortable.

Gamzee flushed a deep shade of purple, and Tavros looked like how you’d expect and inexperienced actor to look if you told him, ‘pretend to act surprised.’ Nobody moved at all, waiting for their reaction or response. When I glanced away from them, I noticed Equius looked completely shocked, and experiencing some kind of extreme second-hand embarrassment.

“There is certainly no need for such wildly false accusations.” Equius filled in the silence.

“Not false, EQ, just look at them.”

“Uh, no.” Tavros laughed nervously, “We’re really just doing it to make fun of you, Sollux, and uh, I just hang out with Aradia enough, for her to tell me that you kick in your sleep, and I’m not about to deal with that.”

“AA’s a bastard-ass snitch!”

“I HEARD THAT!” yelled an Aradia-sounding voice from the other room, which prompted a lot of giggling, also from the other room.

There was another long moment of silence throughout the room as they realized what had just happened.

“Shit man, you dead now.” Gamzee told Sollux, matter-of-factly.

Eridan blinked in horror. “How much of that did they hear?”

\--------------------

Mother was drinking again. It was only one glass of wine, but  _ I _ knew that it probably wouldn’t end there.

I did my best to ignore her. She was stressed enough as it was without her daughter reminding her that an alcohol addiction was, in fact, unhealthy. She might as well have some time to cool off- especially if she was planning to hack into a government database tomorrow. That always did tucker her out, no matter how fun she found it.

As per usual, I put myself to bed.

I put away my clipboard, changing into my pajamas, and sat down on my bed, though I didn’t try to fall asleep. My mind was far too busy to get any sleep, and with the trolls all in bed and Mom drinking, I had no one to talk to.

No one in the house, that was.

I pulled the covers just up over my legs, and leaned against my pillows and the headboard of my bed. From my bedside table, I grabbed my phone, and opened a group chat.

John, Dave, and Jade all weren’t online, so I might as well start a conversation. At least it would give me something to do.

I did smile as I stared down at my friends’ group chat, and cautiously, I typed in a message. Something to make me feel better, or maybe tire me into actually falling asleep. It was just one message, and it would be all worth it in the end.

\--  tentacleTherapist [TT] opened NERD FRIEND GROUP CHAT at 22:49 --

TT: Is anybody still awake?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave any feedback you have y'all, especially if you have any questions about the story. I'm more than happy to answer them all, and I'll have the time for it, don't worry :D
> 
> writing Kanaya's speech is a lot harder than one might think.


	11. Breaking the law, as you do - Sollux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whattup, i'm back and better than ever. sorry I didn't update back in december, I was decided to take a break for the holidays as many authors do. i hope that you all have had a decent 2020 so far, and I wish y'all an awesome start to this new decade! oh, and I looked up fucking hacker terminology for this chapter so please make sure to read the whole thing. i can't believe I crumbled to the will of sollux, hacker e-boy extraordinaire for writing purposes. help.
> 
> if anybody reading this works with code/computers, i'm so fucking sorry.

Terezi and Tavros weren’t speaking to each other and no one knew why. Well, of course one could guess that they’d gotten into a argument- a bad one at that, considering neither of them were very argumentative. But, nobody (and yes, that included me) had any idea what they’d been arguing about, and what sparked the start of the passive aggressive silent treatment.

I’d be lying to say this was uncommon. Mostly back on the escape pod, when we had nothing better to do, there would be two trolls who got into a particularly bad argument, and would refuse to interact with each other in the slightest for a day or two, before they would calm down or forget about whatever they were fighting about. I myself had gotten into an argument with Nepeta over something so outrageously petty that I couldn’t even remember what it was, and refused to speak to her for a day. I was over it, of course. But now, with everyone in a better mood and a more comfortable environment, it was a little strange for the two to have gotten into that bad of a fight.

I’d also be lying to say that I cared that much about the whole ordeal. If it didn’t involve me, I didn’t try to  _ get _ involved. That was my rule back on Alternia and it was my rule now.

If I actually cared about what the other trolls were doing, then I wouldn’t be sitting on my human ‘bed’ in the dark, staring at my palmhusk, just because Feferi said it was bad for my eyes. No thank you, I had important work to be doing.

And by important work, I mean sulking in the dark.

I shrank farther into the corner of the bed and wall, positioning the pillow next to me so that I was cocooned with some kind of pressure. From outside the block, I heard the sound of loud yelling and laughing outside, all the voices I recognized. All my friends were probably out, doing something conventionally fun and having fun doing it.

Almost, but not quite all the way, I wished I was out there with them. But, I knew that I was going to have another migraine at some point that day, I just knew it. And by going out there and watching TV with all my friend yelling would just speed up the process. I didn’t know if that was a thing that could happen. If anything, listening to all their yowling would give me a different kind of migraine that didn’t have anything to do with the souls of the doomed.

Doing anything felt ‘incorrect’ without Karkat around. Of course I had Feferi and Aradia and everyone else to keep me company, but it was incomplete without Karkat.

Not Vriska, though. She could choke for all I cared.

I tapped some more on my palmhusk, claws clicking against the screen. Hacking on my palmhusk was a whole lot harder than it was on my husktop, but I didn’t have access to my husktop. It had been destroyed along with a lot of my other stuff when my hive was bombed. So, unless I decided to make a new husktop, I was stuck with just my palmhusk, and coding on it would be near impossible for anyone other than myself.

As I continued staring down at the screen, I was duly realizing that Roxy’s firewall was a lot more secure that I’d thought, but I wasn’t going to let  _ that _ stop me.

When she’d first announced that she was going to try hacking into the human government’s database, I was the first person to offer my hacking expertise as help. And although I’d assumed she’d accept my help, she was all,  _ “Oh no, hon, thanks for the thought, but I don’t need any help. I don’t want to bother you with boring work.” _

No matter how much I’d insisted I wanted to help, she didn’t budge.

I was quick to assume was that the reason for this was that she doubted my skill in hacking. So of course, my course of action was to hack into the firewall of her very cyber-secure home, which seemed to include sensitive information about her workplace, along with more generic things like her address and other personal information that was completely and utterly useless to me. After all, I was only doing this to prove that I could help the CIA to find out anything about Karkat and Vriska.

It was all going according to plan.

Despite my determination, it was proving to be relatively difficult, and the fact that I couldn’t understand any of the human letters sure wasn’t helping.

But, after a good hour or two of frustration and endless hacking, I’d finally broken in. Or, at the very least, I’d broken  _ something.  _ I still couldn’t read, but I’d done plenty of hacking in the past, and from how things look, it looked significantly broken into or cyberly messed up.

Proud and a little bit loopy, I stood up from my spot on the bed.

My legs and back were stiff from being curled up for so long, and I winced from the discomfort. I shoved my palmusk into the front pocket of my jeans, and stretched my arms again before finally walking out of the block. My plan was that once I finished hacking Roxy’s firewall, I would go and find her (wherever she happened to be in the house), show her the hard earned result of my hacking work. Once she realized that she made a huge mistake by not letting me help her, she would have me work together with her to try to hack this government. After all, more brains meant more ideas to bounce off each other, and by all means, a faster process. Logically, it was the perfect plan, so I just had to hope that A. I wouldn’t get side-tracked on my way to go looking for her, and B. She wouldn’t say some shit about preferring to work alone. That would mean I’d wasted hours of my time for nothing.

I marched down the hallway, very sure of myself.

But just as I was leaving the respiteblock, I noticed Terezi standing outside of the block across the hall, leaning against the wall. The first thing about her I noticed was that she looked miserable.

“What’s wrong?” I asked offhandedly, stopping to give her a concerned look.

Her head snapped up in the direction of my voice. “Oh,” she mumbled. “I thought it smelled like mustard around here. Nothing’s wrong, I’m just worried about Karkat and Vriska.”

I sighed. Honestly, it was the answer I was expecting. “Me too.”

She nodded awkwardly, and I instantly felt stupid. Jesus shit fucking Christ, I was bad at consoling. But, Terezi adjusted her glasses, and managed a toothy smile. “I’ll be okay, I just need some time to myself. I’ve spend  _ way _ too much time… interacting. Did you know that human video games can literally ruin your life? Crazy.”

“Yeah,” I laughed, glad to see that she was at least somewhat okay.

Now that it was a better time to leave the conversation, I continued down the hall. After a few seconds of walking, I finally reached the large expanse that was the living block.

A lot of my friends were there in the block, all seeming very engaged in their own activities. About seven people in total were there, spread out across the couches and comfy chairs of the block. The other trolls seemed to be somewhere else

“What’s up you fucking nerds?” I called out to them, because it’s not like I’d greet them in any other way.

There was a chorus of “Hey, Sollux,” as I entered the block, and I spared a nod and a generic greeting in return. Feferi smiled at me excitedly, and I saw that she was sitting on the floor, painting Nepeta’s nails with nail polish that seemed to belong to Rose, considering the gothic, dreary colors. Next to Nepeta, Equius was sitting, looking very indignant that he was being included in “such frivolous activities.” On the nearby couch, Gamzee and Tavros seemed to be playing a human card game, which Kanaya was watching with great interest. And right between the couch and the spot where I was just walking, was Aradia sitting in a big armchair.

“Hey, AA,” I greeted, waving to her. “Are you still mad at me for calling you a snitch last night?”

“Not particularly,” she shrugged in reply. 

I nodded, satisfied with that answer, and tried to continue walking through the living block in search of Roxy.

But before I could continue walking past, Aradia’s hand took hold of my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks as I gave her a look of sudden confusion. She had an odd expression on her face, but I didn’t think I was in trouble.

“Hey, can I ask you a question?” she inquired.

“Uhm, you’re my moirail, of course you can.” I blinked, tilting my head to the side. “What kind of question?”

“A question about your ‘hearing doomed souls’ thing, actually,” Aradia went on, her eyes wide in a way that was a bit unsettling. “Have you noticed that something about the souls is different here on Earth? Just that anything about it is a little off or weird?”

“Different…” my voice trailed off as I thought about the question.

I nodded, mostly to myself. Earth was different in so many ways, but was probably the most blatant when it came to a certain aspect of my psionics.

Some of my friends had some exchanges about how strange they thought that Earth was. Mostly talking about the adults being on-planet, the obvious lack for any care about blood castes or any social classes for that matter. Or the significantly different technology and food, and the humans themselves. The humans with that light, yellow hair that didn’t look like it was dyed, their skin that seemed to vary in hue so often, and their blatantly hornless heads. But, as strange as we all figured that the humans were, none of my friends, except maybe Aradia, could grasp how strange the planet really was.

It took someone who could hear voices. Somebody, who as they got to Earth, noticed how those voices changed.

From the moment I’d gotten onto the planet, even despite my fever I could tell how different the voices of the doomed were. How my head felt so much… clearer. Quieter. It wasn’t that there were no voices, because there was plenty- plenty of people were destined to die soon, but that wasn’t what grabbed my attention.

It was the absence of the agonized screams that filled my head back on Alternia. The violent choking and coughing up blood, the sounds of drones’ lasers shooting down children who barely had time to cry out in pain. The shrill noise of pain and fear that haunted me for as long as I could remember. But here on Earth, it had almost dropped entirely. The violence was still there, but it was so much quieter, lesser, not as significant.

I should’ve found it comforting, but even as relieved I was, I couldn’t help but give in to the eerie instinct in my head that told me that there was something wrong with the quiet.

Aradia was still looking at me, patiently awaiting my response.

“It’s way more peaceful.” I admitted.

She smiled. “Just what I was thinking. I mean, when I’m around here, I’m not being bombarded by ghosts! They’re everywhere, obviously, but their just minding their business. It’s only when I try to talk to them do they get cranky. Oh, and they all seem pretty weirded out by the fact that someone alive was talking to them.”

“Well, from what the humans said, they like, can’t talk to ghosts.” Because of my lisp, I got a bit hung up on the word 'ghosts' with the double S at the end, and narrowly avoided spitting everywhere.

"I know!" Aradia sighed, twisting her finger around a coil of her black hair. "It's so totally lame."

Nepeta, who was still having her nails painted by Feferi, looked up to speak at that moment, since she'd apparently been listening to us the whole time. I couldn't blame her, she was only a few steps away. "Well, you know what they say," Nepeta grinned, nudging Aradia's knee with her elbow. "Everybody hates the voices in their head until they start hating you back!"

"You just made that up," Equius protested, looking at her in confusion.

"Nuh-uh!"

While my other friends were debating the validity of Nepeta's supposed idiom, I made my escape. I walked very fast, past the couches of the living block, and nearly broke into a run as I made my way down the long hallway.

All of the hallways in the Lalonde's house looked different, which was somehow worse than if they all looked the same. Just when you thought you knew where you were going, you stumble into a hallway you hadn't seen before. It was incredibly frustrating especially for someone with a shit sense of direction, like me. This hallway smelled like incense and flowers, which wasn't surprising from the hanging flower pots that adorned the walls. And on a table that was wedged into an inlet in the wall, I noticed a stick of burning incense, so that smell was explained as well.

On the wall to my left, there was a large picture frame with a photograph of Roxy in a strange black cloak that covered most of her body, and a weird looking, square shaped hat with a tassel coming off of it. She was standing on a podium in front of a microphone, holding a rolled up paper. At the bottom of the picture frame, there was a brass plaque with some words etched into it that I couldn’t read.

I hummed curiously. The picture clearly held some kind of significance, but I couldn’t fathom what it was.

I picked up the pace again and kept walking down the hall.

“Oh, great, it’s  _ you _ .”

For a split-second, my heart sank, thinking that the voice behind me was one of the voices of the imminently deceased, but I quickly realized that it was coming from behind me, not from inside my head. My heart sank  _ further _ when I realized that it was a familiar voice echoing from behind, and not one that I wanted to hear. Eridan’s voice.

I had an irritated look on my face before I even turned around, but once I did… sure enough, Eridan was standing, wearing his ugly scarf and cape, and an even uglier expression that looked like he had a lemon permanently lodged in his throat.

“Yes, it’s me,” I muttered in return, my fists clenching. “Have you seen Roxy anywhere?”

“Why the hell would I tell  _ you _ ?” Eridan scoffed. There was a second of silence after that, but then Eridan continued talking. “Anyway, Roxy’s in the quote en quote ‘computer room’ down the hall, whatever that means. Not too keen on visitors either, so you should probably come with me so you don’t go try to bother her. That seems like a shitty thing you’d do, doesn’t it?”

I was already walking away, in the direction that Eridan had gestured to.

Eridan, however, seemed outrageously offended that I’d ignored his suggestion, and left the conversation when it was clearly over. “Wow, typical Sol. Not even going to thank me?”

“Nope.” I called back, and started walking a bit faster.

“Well, fine!” he shouted, his voice slowly trailing. “As if I would even want to walk with you anyway, asshole!”

“Likewise, fishface.”

I heard Eridan make an annoyed  _ ‘hmph’  _ noise, and the fading footsteps signified that he decided to walk away as well.  _ Perfectly fine by me. I totally don’t even like bothering Eridan or being around him at all. _

I did my best to ignore that thought, and stomped down the hall.

My mood was worsened by the talk with Eridan, but it wasn’t him  _ being _ there that had made me feel shitty. Though I hated to admit, even to myself, seeing Eridan get annoyed and riled up was kind of fun, which any wriggler with half of a working thinkpan knew was an obvious sign of caliginous feelings.  _ That _ was was made me mad. Nepeta always said again and again that the first stage of a budding kismesissitude was denying your feelings, and that always ruined my day knowing the fact that I probably did have pitch feelings for Eridan. But, god, I’d never hear the end of it from my friends, and it would be kind of fucked up, considering that he was Feferi’s ex-moirail. Karkat would probably lecture me how it’s a romcom rule of romance that you can’t date your partner’s ex. So, I just did my best to ignore it, and act like my hatred was entirely platonic. Besides, I doubted that Eridan had those same feelings for me, the bastard he was.

Eridan had said that Roxy was in the ‘computer room’ down the hall, and after a bit more walking, I seemed to have found it.

Sure enough, it was at the very end of the hall, with no room across from it. The door was barely propped open.

Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door, and stepped inside to see Roxy sitting alone in the room, in front of multiple monitors- one she was working on and the other was a blank husktop screen. There were several other electronic and strange looking mechanical objects scattered about the room. Roxy was sitting in a very nice looking gaming chair, typing and clicking away at her keyboard.

I cleared my throat to announce my presence. “Hey.”

“Huh?” Roxy, jumped, seeming a bit confused, and glanced over at me. “Oh, hi there, Sollux,” Roxy looked up from the computer screen, and smiled at me warmly. “What’s up?”

“I hacked your firewall.” I announced quite simply.

“The… firewall?” She raised an eyebrow, confused. “Um, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I  _ hacked _ your firewall. All by myself.” Since she didn’t seem to trust my word, I lifted up my palmhusk to display the glitched out screen of her broken firewall. “See?”

A few moments of silence broke through the air as Roxy looked at the screen.

“Oh my god, no way.” she mumbled, “I coded that firewall so that not even the government… holy shit, and you’re just a kid.” Roxy's mouth was hanging open slightly in astonishment, staring blankly like she couldn't believe her eyes. "Um, first of all, I want you to fix my firewall. Second of all, you can help me hack the CIA."

I grinned smugly. "How much are you paying?"

It wasn't until those words left my mouth did I remember that I had absolutely no use for human money, nor did I know how much it was worth.

Roxy sighed and rubbed her hands, and seemed to think over this offer in her head. Hopefully she wasn’t counting on the fact that I didn’t know about money. "Well, I guess that's only fair.” she tilted her head thoughtfully, “Hacking is hard work, after all. How's five dollars?"

My eyes narrowed. "I'll settle for nothing less than six."

"You drive a hard bargain.” she replied, nodding professionally. “But I can accept it. Deal.”

We sat in silence for a moment before I turned to her again. "Is six dollars a lot?"

"Hell yeah, it's a lot."

“But, anyway,” I cleared my throat, knowing that I didn’t get distracted by the prospect of being paid. “Any of my friends will tell you that I’m apeshit bananas at computers. I’ll make sure to be of help, I swear you won’t regret this. I mean, if we work together, we’ll be  _ at worst _ just detected as a zero-day-threat. At best, they won’t even know we were ever there. With the two of us working together, we’ll be the unstoppable team!”

Roxy laughed, “You’re speaking my language, kid!.”

“So, what’s the plan? What have you got done so far.”

Roxy looked back to the screen of her husktop, which was still covered by the wall of code and symbols I didn’t understand. She sighed through gritted teeth, sounded a bit tired. The kind of tired where even though you aren’t tired  _ yet, _ you know that the daunting task ahead of you will undoubtedly leave you incredibly tired.

She glanced at me, and back to the screen. “I’ve made to to the place that I think we’re supposed to be. It was a link for sale on the dark web advertising information on Area 51. Oh, um, for troll convenience, Area 51 is a government facility that’s been rumored to have aliens in it. While I doubt that much is true, it’s super high security and very secretive, so if your friends are anywhere, they were definitely taken there. Do you think you could help me decode some freaky encrypted shit that I found?”

“Hell yeah!” I exclaimed, shooting my fist into the air, giddy that I was now helping out with this. “How about we put on some music?” I suggested, holding up my palmhusk. “I’d sure prefer it to working it complete fucking silence.”

Roxy looked proud. “An alien after my own heart. You do that,  _ then  _ we can get to work.”

\----------------------------------

In all my time of hacking, I never would've considered myself a white hat hacker- a hacker who used their skills for good, like tracking down criminals and protecting innocent people. After all, I made viruses for fun, and not even viruses that benefited me, viruses that were just a nuisance to the people stupid enough to get hacked. If anything, I was the kind of person that white hat hackers were trying to stop.

But, over the next few hours, I was starting to realize that for one of the very few times in my life, I was actually using my hacking expertise to do something good. Well, the human government probably wouldn't think it was good, but I did, Roxy did, and all of my friends did.

Roxy and I worked like clockwork.

It was astounding to both of us how well we worked together. We had a similar sense of humor, and made jokes the whole time, and I learned that Roxy was, in fact, really  _ really _ funny. I introduced Roxy to troll music, a surplus of which I had on my palmhusk. Whenever we would encounter a problem that stumped us both, we took turns explaining what we had to do, and what we’d done, repeating it in increasingly silly connotations until we figured out what we’d done wrong. It worked surprisingly well, and I was having more fun than I’d had in a very long time. Really, I hadn’t been so happy since far before the escape from Alternia.

At some point, Kanaya came in to remind us to get lunch, and we decided to have a hearty meal of instant noodles and potato chips. I also tried human soda, which I was hesitant to, but it turned out to taste great- far better than troll soda, and it didn’t make you drunk like Faygo did. Roxy, on the other hand, had a glass of something called ‘wine,’ which seemed to be a human soporific considering the snippy comments Rose made about it being  _ “a little early for alcohol.” _

But after all our hard work of decoded encrypted text, hacking our way through websites that require passwords, and getting rather stumped on a certain ‘voice activation key required,’ we’d finally come to one certain, shady-looking website.

The page was all black except for a few links- six of them.

Roxy shrugged, and mumbled, “Welp,” before clicking on the first link. “This one’s labeled as a PDF, for some kinda record or log.”

Sure enough, it opened up frighteningly into a PDF with over sixty pages.

“Oh, shit.” I gritted my teeth, annoyed that there was so much that I couldn’t read.

“No worries, kid, I’ll read it later.” Roxy assured, and she moved the PDF’s window over onto her other monitor’s screen.

I pointed to the remaining five links. “What’s the deal with those?”

The links all seemed to be labeled in a similar nature since they were all the same size and length, and Roxy quickly translated them out of courtesy. “It just says Camera 1, Camera 2, and then goes up until Camera 5.”

I hummed thoughtfully. “Start with number 1 and we’ll work our way through.”

Roxy did as I suggested, clicking on the first link.

Just as it was clicked, it opened a new window in the center of the computer screen without an application icon. The content of the screen was fuzzy and blurred, like a very poor quality Grubtube video. Lining the edges of the screen, there was some strange icons. In the top right corner, there was some human writing that was blinking in and out of view.

It took me a minute to figure out just what the screen was displaying, but from the clues of the small symbols around the edges of the frame and the shitty quality of the picture it displayed, I knew  _ exactly _ what it was.

It was a security live feed.  _ Holy shit. _ That was the luckiest find of all.

“Security footage?” Roxy seemed to be thinking just how I was.

Though my eyes were still glued to the screen, I grinned in affirmation. “Not just footage, a live feed of it!” I looked closer at the screen to see what it was showing.

This particular security camera showed the few of a very dingy room with concrete floors and glass walls, with a not-very-comfortable looking bed in the corner. Maybe room wasn’t the right word,  _ cell _ would be much more fitting. And in the room, there were two trolloid figures dressed in white. While the footage of the camera was very low quality, and the figures were both wearing white scrubs, Sollux could tell from the mess of black hair and barely visible orange horns that the two people there were Karkat and Vriska. Karkat was sitting on the bed in the corner, with his head  hanging low. Vriska was pacing the cell back and forth like a feral beast trapped in a cage at the zoo. But, without question, my friends were there.

“Oh my god…” I whispered. My eyes were wide and fixated on the screen, my heart was racing, I was in awe and repulsion of what I was seeing. “They’re there. Right there! We… we were right. Holy fucking shit, we were right.”

Roxy’s breathing was heavy and shaking just like mine, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her nod. “Yeah, we sure were. But looking at this… I don’t know if that’s a good thing anymore. Maybe it’s not so great that they’re here.”

I stared at the poor conditions of the cell, and at my dejected-looking friends. Looking at it made me feel like absolute garbage. Not even hot garbage, just garbage.

I shrunk into my chair, especially creeped out by the sight. I swallowed, trying to say something.

“Yeah, I think that you’re right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wellllll that was a ride. who's curious to find out wtf is up with our buddies karkat and vriska? i know i am. please ask ANY AND ALL questions you have about this chapter. hmu if you want to talk i'll be more than delighted to respond.


	12. It’s not fun to stay at Area 51 - Vriska

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read to title to the tune of YMCA, if you haven't already figured that out.  
> Hey! I actually managed to update this month! Good for me. Not much to say here other than Big Thanks to my sister for proofreading and helping out with this chapter. Enjoy the chapter and PLEASE COMMENT!! Ask any questions you want, I love answering stuff and talking about this story.

If I’d had my way, I wouldn't have started drinking the water.

On the first night awake in the facility, Karkat was curled up in a ball, mumbling to himself as he slept, but _I_ was wide awake; alone, scared, intoxicated and so very dehydrated. It took maybe 10 hours sitting in the facility in isolation to realize, or rather, _notice_ that the humans had provided us water. It came from a rusty tap on the wall with a little switch on top. I hadn’t noticed it at first since I couldn’t see anything without my glasses unless it was right in front of my face. But, after the tranquilizer drug started wearing off and I explored the cell, I looked through the glass wall of the cell at the other side of the tap. There was metal tubing leading from the tap, off to somewhere I couldn’t see without my glasses.

Shakily, I pulled the lever of the tap. Since it was so old and rusty and I only had one arm, it took some effort, but I was able to flip it on.

Water started pouring out from the wall.

I’d gasped in relief, and without thinking about it, I placed my head under the tap to take a drink. I instantly felt a sense of relief as the feeling of my dry mouth and throat were quenched. Back on Alternia, I never would’ve thought I’d be so relieved to see the water.

It wasn’t until a few hours after I drank the water before I started thinking that it might’ve not been the best idea. After all, I didn’t know where it had been.

Would I rather get lead poisoning or die of dehydration? I had no idea.

After getting some water to my parched head, and the effects of the drug began to fade, I started to analyze more of the cell. Aside from the tap for water, on the opposite side of the cell, I noticed that there was a flimsy-looking, stall-like door, the hinges of which looked like they might fall apart at any moment. On the inside of the door, there was a lock that was ultimately useless, since there was a gap in the bottom in the door that was big enough to crawl under. 

Inside the stall, there was an extension of the cell with concrete walls instead of glass, and inside was a single toilet, which looked like perhaps the most nightmarish part of the cell.

I grimaced, disgusted. No troll with two ounces of self-respect would be caught dead in a place like this. Or at least, no _highblood_ with two ounces of self-respect would. Luckily, there was no one there to catch me, except maybe Karkat, and I could beat him up if I wanted to.

But I had no motivation to beat him up. Or to do anything, really.

I subconsciously started picking at the scrappy bits of metal plating and wire in my robotic arm’s stump. I knew that Equius would get mad at me for it, but Karkat was right, I would die before I saw him again, or any of our other friends. I felt useless and vulnerable enough without my arm, and it sent me unpleasant memories of when I first lost it. Along with that, the humans had confiscated my dice, so no weapons. They took my glasses, so no clear sight. They replaced my clothes with boring scrubs, so I was cold and barefoot. They woke me up by pouring water over my head, so my hair was greasy and all of my makeup was washed off, and that _really_ got under my skin since that was some damn expensive makeup I stole.

Vulnerable and defenseless. I, Vriska Serket, was vulnerable and defenseless and it was far too embarrassing to even look at myself like this.

 _Well, maybe not entirely defenseless,_ I thought to myself as I stood up.

Two soldiers were posted at the heavyset metal door that Karkat and I entered the cell from. I focused on looking at one- the one on the right side of the door. I stared at the back of his head through the glass and shut my eyes determinedly.

Mind control is only one of two powers that highbloods can have, and nobody knows a thing about chucklevoodoo or how it works, so in a way, mind control was the only power. It was limited to ceruleans, and even among us ceruleans, it was incredibly rare. Even rarer was being able to control someone beyond just doing simple tasks. Luckily, genetics had served me lucky, and gave me the most powerful kind of mind control, at least for someone of my age. Thanks to my ancestor, Mindfang, for that.

Assuming that the troll was lower than a tealblood and didn’t have some specific psychic ability, I could control them into doing pretty much anything. Falling asleep, waking up, giving me something I want, walking off a cliff, or straight into the mouth of a giant spider.

Or even staring into the sun until you go blind.

Through closed eyes, I tried to sense the mind of the soldier. In the darkness of the mindscape, I tried to look around. Behind me, I could see the painstakingly bright red heat signature of Karkat’s mind, even from turning the other way. The soldiers’ minds had a dimmer light. Two dark grey minds, with tethers that tied to the ceiling and ground.

It didn’t matter that I was missing an arm when it came to mind control. In the mindscape, I reached out _both_ my arms out to take hold of the tethers of the right soldier’s mind.

But as soon as I took hold of the tethers, and as I _thought_ I got a good hold of them, my fingers passed straight through them into the palms of my hands, like his mind was never tangible in the first place.

My eyes shot open just in time to see the soldier collapse to the ground in a heap.

 _What? That’s not supposed to happen!_ My mind was racing with confusion as I watched the soldier collapse. _Holy shit, is he dead?_

The left soldier looked highly freaked out after watching his buddy collapse for seemingly no reason and reacted instantly. He dropped to his knees as well, and shook the other guy with his arm, clearly not expecting what had just happened. His eyes flicked up to me, who was still watching with eerily calm confusion. Hell, if anything, I was more confused than he was. But, his expression was accusing, and I just knew it would be the perfect time to fuck with him.

I offered my creepiest smile. For someone like Aradia, creepy smiles were art that she was born with a talent for, but it took some effort for me.

The soldier’s eyes widened in fear, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“You fucking dimwit!” I cackled, even though he could neither hear nor understand me. “Oh geez, that’s gotta be the best thing that’s happened since I woke up. Thanks for that!!!!!!!!”

As I continued convulsing with laughter, the soldier was looking more frightened by the minute. Through the wall, I saw him shout something into a walkie talkie on his belt. He put his hand on the soldier of the collapsed soldier again, attempting to shake him awake. And from what it seemed, it worked. The soldier stirred, and slowly sat up from the ground. I was both relieved and disappointed to see that he hadn’t dropped dead, he’d just fallen asleep. The newly awake soldier seemed incredibly confused, and he stood up with the other guard. They spoke for a few moments and then turned to me.

Both of the soldiers stared at me with hardened, vaguely scared expressions.

I stared back curiously. “That’s new,” I mumbled to myself.

Soon after, more soldiers arrived at the sealed entryway to the cell where the first two soldiers were posted, and they seemed to be talking. The soldier who’d fallen asleep pointed at me in the cell, and they seemed to be discussing something about me.

I turned away from the glass cell wall and turned to look at Karkat, who was still sound asleep, despite the minor chaos that had just occurred.

Before I could take another step forward, a thought crossed my mind that hadn’t before. A thought that stopped me in my tracks and made my entire, very weakened body go entirely tense with sudden realization, even fear.

_The humans must’ve broken my mind control._

There was no other explanation. I’d intended to make the guard I was controlling shoot the other guard and unlock our cell, but instead he fell asleep- that didn’t make any sense, when I controlled someone to do something, they either did it without struggle or didn’t react to the attempt at all. A human mind couldn’t possibly be too hard to manipulate, and even if it was, no one had _ever_ reacted like that to mind control. To Aradia, Terezi, or any of the other highbloods, it just didn’t have any effect, and they didn’t notice it even happened. Even when just starting using my mind control, or using it when I was younger, nothing was as clumsy or even wildly incorrect as that.

But this… The humans must’ve known about my power somehow. They must’ve put a chip in my brain and gave me some kind of drug that disabled or blocked it. Or worse, they found a way to damage it _permanently._ That was it. I had no weapons whatsoever and I was cold and scared and defenseless and really starting to accept the fact that Karkat and I were going to _die_ in here. There was nothing I could do about it. _I can’t protect him, I can’t protect my friends, I can’t save them, I can’t even take care of myself._

I leaned against the wall and began to sink to the floor. My breathing quickened, my shoulders shook. _Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, you’re better than that._ I was panicking, and I knew it, but there was nothing I could do.

Karkat coughed in his sleep and my head jerked up, snapping me out of my daze.

I let out a breath of relief after being reminded that I wasn’t entirely alone in the cell. It was surprising and slightly impressive (though I’d never say that to his face) that he was able to fall asleep so easily and sleep for so long without a recuperacoon, I’d always had a lot of trouble with it. But I wasn’t too envious- choosing escapism over reality was weak, and of course _I_ knew Karkat was weak, weaky weak.

Perhaps I could just… _test_ my mind control on Karkat, just to make sure if it was still working. Maybe I was just rusty, and after this I’d be able to control the humans, and get us out of here! I doubt he’d be too enthusiastic about the idea, but I didn’t care.

It was for our own safety. He’d thank me later.

I shut my eyes and placed my fingers to my temple. As I did, I entered the dark mindscape. In front of me, sure as day, I saw the red signature of Karkat’s mind. Karkat, with no magic powers and no highblood mind-armor, was one of the easiest trolls to control that I’d ever encountered. The only reason I didn’t do so more often was because despite it being easy, it was far from pleasant. And Karkat would snitch to Terezi, and that would cause a bigger cacophony of problems.

Concentrating as hard as a could, I took hold of the tethers that connected his mind to the space all around. And with all of my forceful strength, I planted a message in his head.

_W8ke up!!!!!!!!_

I opened my eyes to see if it had worked. All of a sudden, Karkat sat upright with a gasp for air, pupils glowing blue, _very_ much awake. I grinned, pleased with myself.

“Nice!” I exclaimed out loud with relieved glee. “Now, stand up!” I flicked my finger upward to mimick the motion. I didn’t need to narrate out loud, but it felt more validating to me, who had just thought I’d broken my mind control.

Karkat did just what I told him, and stood up in an unnaturally jerky way.

I sighed. _Still as fun as ever._ Finally, I released the tethers of his mind, leaving him to his own thoughts.

Unfortunately for me, Karkat was significantly less excited about this than I was. The instant he regained consciousness, he nearly stumbled to the floor, and quickly caught himself. He turned to me, his head slowly turning a full 90 degree angle before landing on me. It was safe to say that he looked absolutely livid.

“You…” he hissed, his teeth bared, and his eyes filled with fury. “You nosy-ass, thinkpan fuckering, bitchy sack of shit.”

I snorted with laughter. “How do you even come up with this stuff?”

Then the yelling started.

“Did you just fucking mind control me? Wow, that’s a new low even for you, the Empress of all mind fuckery for no good reason. Wow, what a title to bestow! I would say that I’m fucking honored to hell’s end if I wasn’t barfing all over this goddamn, shitty-ass concrete floor both out of disgust for you, _and_ because you feel the need to mind control me into doing weird shit in order to humiliate the fuck out of me at any given time! For the love of fuck, get creative, Vriska! Eridan is able to humiliate the shit out of me just by standing in my general fucking vicinity of ten feet or so, or being seen in public with him at all, and _he_ doesn’t have the help of any fancy mind control power. You do the same thing every time, and I’m totally not scared of some wriggler-brained magic power, I’m just annoyed by it, because I’ve seen it all before. You hear me, Vriska? Are you listening to these words traveling to your idiotic cartilige stumps? Get creative, Vriska, you predictable bitch. Get. Fucking. Creative.”

I wasn’t listening, if anything I was just letting him yell for politeness sake. Karkat got crabby if he didn’t have anybody to cuss out for no reason for too long. Though, I guess he did have a reason this time.

After I’d consciously zoned out for a good couple minutes, Karkat seemed to have subsided, or at least tired himself out.

“Are you done?” I asked, and it wasn’t sarcastic. It was a genuine question.

Karkat nodded and crossed his arms. “Yeah, I’m done. You have anything to add?”

“Actually? Yeah,” I sat down on the fabric slab that Karkat had been sleeping on, and found that it was weirdly soft, like a couch with a big snuggleplane over it. “The reason I mind controlled you was just to test if it was still working because, well, I tried it out on the human guard.”

He groaned in exasperation. “Oh, _brilliant.”_

“Chill out, it didn’t work.” I rolled my eyes and continued. “I tried to make him shoot his buddy, but instead of doing anything he just... fell asleep. Fell asleep, like, right on the floor.”

“Huh,” Karkat’s brow furrowed. “That’s weird. Anything like that ever happened before?”

“Nothing like that, no.”

We sat there in silence for a few minutes, pondering the meaning of this. I was beginning to notice that this was actually the first time in ages that Karkat and I were actually able to have a relatively normal conversation in which we weren’t constantly butting heads. Every interaction I had with him felt like verbal warfare, and he would always commit several verbal war crimes. I was also beginning to notice the fetid smell of something distinctly like dish soap.

Karkat was tapping his foot, and it was beginning to annoy me. But, he spoke before I could voice this irritation.

“Maybe human thinkpans are structured differently,” he suggested. “Like, they’re made of some other material you can’t control or whatever. Because I doubt it has anything to do with your freaky mind bullshit, and everything to do with the fact that they’re an entirely different _species_ than us.”

I thought this over, tilting my head to the side as I considered it. “Makes enough sense to me.”

Just after I said this, I jumped at hearing a loud clicking and creaking noise, followed by the rancid dish soap smell intensifying.

Both Karkat and I looked up from our silence to see several soldiers with big guns and suspicious expressions standing in the now open doorway. I quickly stood up from the slab couch thing, alert. Among the soldiers was the guard I’d tried to mind control.

“What do they want now?” Karkat wondered aloud, sighing irritably.

“Shut up,” I mumbled in return, not turning my gaze from the cluster of soldiers.

The soldier in the lead, who I didn’t recognize (although Karkat seemed to), stepped forward with the gun in his hands. He looked weird, with wrinkles and hair on his face, and sunken eagle eyes that were trying so hard to be intimidating. Unfortunately, the intimidation was working on Karkat, but I was proud it wasn’t on me.

“Scaredy purrbeast,” I taunted towards Karkat. “He’s just a human.”

“A human with a big gun,” Karkat retorted, speaking through gritted teeth. “And shut the fuck up, I’m not fucking scared at all.”

If I rolled my eyes any harder I would’ve dislocated them. “Act like it, then.”

Leader-human guy made a gross, snarling expression, and barked out a few gibberish words to the soldiers behind him. Instantly, two of the soldiers rushing forward- one being very tall and the other relatively shorter. The shorter one walked over to Karkat, and I looked away from them. The taller soldier stepped towards me, and held up his gun threateningly at my chest. _Lame,_ I thought. _I could do better than that if I had my dice._ But I didn’t react, I just sighed dramatically and put my hands up in surrender. I was too tired to fight. I was beginning to wish that I’d taken a leaf out of Karkat’s book and taken a nap.

The soldiers cleared a path out of the cell, but it wasn’t a welcoming one, considering that there were guns pointed at us from all different directions.

Me and Karkat exchanged a glance, of some emotion that I couldn’t quite name.

The next thing I knew we were walking. Walking out of the cell, down the hall somewhere that I had no idea was it was. They didn’t blindfold us this time, but it was just as eerie.

I don’t know how long we walked for, and it didn’t matter. Every place we walked looked the same- the same closed doors, concrete walls, and floors that were colder than ice on my bare feet. Karkat and I walked side by side, but neither of us said a word. Neither did the soldiers, for that matter, the only noise was of our feet on the ground, echoing down the stony grey hallway. The only moment where I dared to even turn my head was when we reached a fork in the road, and Karkat split off, with half of the soldiers following him down a different hallway than we. Both he and I watched each other, appalled, until we faded from sight.

We stopped at a particular door that the soldiers opened wordlessly.

I was hit with a wave of vague recognition when I saw it. It was the room I woke up in… I could barely remember- all I knew was getting dumped with water, a lot of yelling, and I blacked out again. Next thing I knew I was walking with a bag over my head and a thinkpan full of human drugs.

The room was still the same. The uncomfortable chair, the black walls, and the huge floor-to-ceiling mirror that covered one wall. I got hung up on the mirror, I got the feeling that it was important somehow. I had some distinct memory of it that I couldn’t place.

I sat down in the chair without being told to- I was sick of being ordered around by people I couldn’t even understand. My eyes never left the mirror.

A good fifteen minutes and one soldier getting his arm scratched up my claws later, my wrists and ankles were handcuffed to the chair. After my anger died down, I returned to staring at the mirror. I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something important or at the very least, strange, about that mirror. I shook my head at myself, maybe I was going crazy. I forced myself to look away. I felt like I was missing something, but I chose to ignore it- I couldn’t remember hardly anything from waking up in the room.

As I looked away from the mirror, I noticed someone new in the room that hadn’t been there before.

It was another human, a woman with black hair and a long white lab coat. She had a black bag slung around her shoulder that seemed to be full of stuff. Her feet clicked against the floor when she walked giving me the impression that she was wearing high heels, which hardly seemed like the appropriate shoe choice for such a shabby place, but who was I to judge? I didn’t even have shoes.

She was talking with the guards the whole time she walked closer to me, but at this point I’d learned to tune out the human speech I couldn’t understand.

Finally, she crouched down in front of me so that we were eye level. I glared at her, I think that my upper lip was twitching.

She unzipped the black bag that hung at her hip, and took out a syringe, a needle. I recognized it from movies- I knew that it was used to administer some recreational drugs as well as medications used in the Empress’s army by some medics. It was made of glass, and though I wasn’t scared, I was certainly concerned by the sharp needle at the end. 

Then, with the needle in one hand, she used the other hand to twist my arm and hold it against the arm of the chair.

“Hey, watch it!” I growled, attempting to swipe my claws at her, to no avail.

The lab coat woman held my arm forcefully so that my forearm was facing up, and outwards towards her. She held the needle over it. At first I felt annoyed, thinking that it was more human drugs to make me feel sick, but the needle seemed to be empty. I frowned as the needle was lowered.

I shut my eyes as the needle was lodged into my arm. I hissed, trying to repress the painful feeling before forcing my eyes back open. I stared ahead blankly.

There was an odd, unpleasant sensation in my arm, of stinging and poking mixed with a strange tingling feeling. I winced and grimaced, but was able to regain my composure, and I forced myself to look back down at the needle, and almost gagged at what I saw. The small, glass enclosed space inside the needle was beginning to fill up with cobalt blue liquid. Blood. _My_ blood.

I felt like screaming, or crying, or throwing up, but of the fear and disgust and anger mixed up inside my head and I opened my mouth to _say something!_

_Scream! Cry! Throw up! Call for help! Taunt your captors! DO SOMETHING!!!!!!!!_

But nothing came out. 

I watched in meek silence as the needle filled up to the brim with blood, and it was removed from my arm. A small trail of blood trickled from the spot on my arm they stabbed. There was ringing in my ear, and I felt lightheaded, and not because of the blood loss- I had plenty of blood to spare.

I glanced up to look at the white lab coat human.

She was staring at the needle and its contents, seemingly completely fascinated. An eyebrow was raised in curiosity as she turned it over in her hands as she mumbled incoherently. I loosely remember the Jade human mentioning that all humans only had red blood. Maybe that had something to do with the relatively creepy observation.

When she looked back at me, her expression changed. For a moment, I thought I saw a flash of sorrow in her face, but it was gone as soon as it appeared.

She placed the needle inside the large white bag, still around her shoulders, and out of pocket, she took a tissue and a bandaid. My arm was still outstretched, and she used the tissue to wipe off the trail of blue blood still on my arm. After that, she unpeeled in the band aid from the paper backing, and carefully stuck it to my arm to cover the wound. Oddly enough, the bandage was a light brownish color as opposed to grey, though I supposed it wasn’t all that strange, since humans didn’t have grey skin. As for the woman, she shook her head very slightly, entirely to herself. She stood back up with the needle in her bag, and turned away from me. 

She spoke a few words to the guards, before finally walking out of the room. The door shut behind her with a loud, metallic slam.

My eyes shifted up from the door to the ceiling, as if staring at the ceiling would somehow stop the tears from pouring out of my eyes.

I wished Terezi was here. Terezi would know what to do. She was so smart, and she always seemed to know what she was doing, and even when she didn’t, she was confident in the decisions she made. Best of all, the decisions she made weren’t in her own best interest, she found what was best for everyone. I was no leader, neither was Karkat, or Feferi, or any of the other trolls. Terezi was our leader, because Terezi cared about us and knew what to do.

Terezi had a strict moral code, an unshaking sense of right and wrong, to a point where _she_ didn’t decide was was right or wrong, _justice_ decided. She cared about me, yes, but she thought that I was a bad person. She allowed me to kill the trolls I needed to feed my lusus, but as soon as I showed a sign of cruelty to anyone else, my crimes were no longer just. I didn’t understand her justice, but I respected it. I wouldn’t try to interrupt it, I knew what would happen if I did that. Even if I could, I wouldn’t- I loved her too much. If Terezi was here… Terezi would patch up my wounds and make me laugh, even in such a bleak situation. Terezi would make jabs at all of those stupid soldiers and white labcoat people, and she would fight back against the guards. Terezi wasn’t a coward, she didn’t take time to mope around and pity herself- she took action. If Terezi was here she’d already be forming an escape plan, and there would be no chance of us dying. If she was here with me instead of that stupid, mutated freak Karkat, than I wouldn’t even be in this mess.

“Please, don’t forget about us,” I whispered to the sky. “We’re still here, waiting for you.”

I completely slumped against the chairs, giving up all attempts of retaining my pride. The soldiers stared at me from across the room, but I didn’t care. I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt the cold tears fall down my cheeks and onto my neck.

I wished that Terezi was here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, what a wild ride. We're back in Area 51 and we are having a bad time. Leave all your feedback and questions down below, I love all y'all! <3


	13. Of Pretty Girls and Tragic Pasts - Kanaya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *narrowly avoids missing my update for this month* Hey guys, ya boi is back in town. How are you guys doing with this quarantine bullshit? My school's been closed by COVID-19 and I'm doing online now, which is great because people at school are Mean and I prefer being at home, but it sucks because I couldn't have my friends over for my birthday :(  
> In spite of all that, enjoy this month's update, and I hope to see you again soon!

It was becoming commonplace among us trolls that the instant we were all beginning to calm down, some great newsflash would hit us in the jaw as subtle as a sack full of bricks, and it would cause us all to panic again. Such was the way of our ‘vacation’ on Earth so far.

The most recent breakthrough was the findings of Sollux and Roxy after hacking into the Earth government database. They were able to pinpoint the supposed location of Karkat and Vriska, as well as finding the live feed of a security camera exactly where they were. I’d been one of the trolls most eager to have found the footage, though to my own dismay, it didn’t ease my nerves as I hoped it would.

From what it looked like, Vriska and Karkat seemed to be in a prison cell in some dingy facility that looked far from sanitary. Both were wearing horrendous white scrubs that I might’ve felt more strongly about if I wasn’t so worried about their very lives, though while I hated to admit it, survival trumped fashion. Needless to say, I was nervous the whole day.

The day after this comforting yet uncanny discovery, I woke up to find that the Rose human had vanished from the house.

When I went to ask Roxy about it over a cup of coffee (tea for me), she laughed.

“Oh, she left at about 7:30 this morning to go to school,” she explained cheerfully, sipping coffee from a bright pink mug. “She won’t be back until around 3:30 or so.”

I was floored by this answer. “What, why?! What’s this ‘school’ you mentioned?”

Roxy chuckled. “Well, it’s Monday today. Rose only has to go to school five days a week, which are Monday through Friday. But, she has Saturday and Sunday off, which was yesterday and the day before. As for what school is… well, here on Earth, kids have to go to school every week so they can learn things like language, math, science, history and other stuff. They start when they’re around five and go up until they’re around eighteen. But, um, there’s like, some extra optional school you can take afterwards to learn more about a specific topic if you want a specific job. Does your planet have anything like that?”

“Relatively. Tealbloods like Terezi must take some courses on law to be a legislacerator, but that’s about it,” I shook my head, “What you’re saying is rather peculiar. Is school required?”

"In some places, no. But here? Yeah, it is." Roxy said.

I nodded, accepting this answer despite being rather puzzled by it. Could Earth get any stranger? This wasn’t at all like the alien war movies that I’d watched back on Alternia, though I knew that movies weren’t nearly the most accurate source of information. I glanced over back at Roxy, and noticed her plop down a hot pink purse on the kitchen counter. From the coat rack, she grabbed a long white lab coat, which she fastened over her pastel pink sweater.

“Where are you going, I wonder?” I commented offhandedly placing down my teacup with a distinct little _clink._

“Work,” she answered, as if it explained everything. “Believe me, hon, I’d like to stay, but the world stops for no one,” she added with a chuckle.

“Where do you work?”

“I’m a biochemist at Skaianet.” Roxy smiled to herself. “That’s the company that Jade’s grandpa owns.”

Despite not knowing what ‘biochemist’ or ‘Skaianet’ or ‘grandpa’ meant, I hummed thoughtfully like I understood completely. Roxy seemed like she was in a bit of a hurry and I didn’t want to make her late with unnecessary questions. Soon after, Roxy left in the smaller, hot pink human ‘car.’ A couple of the other trolls had gathered to watch her leave like it was some fascinating event they wouldn’t see anywhere else.

For some reason, I was oddly disappointed that Rose wasn’t there. The night before, when she’d spoken to me while taking notes on the trolls, something about her had intrigued me. It was clear she was a very clever and insightful girl, and had an admirably elegant way of speaking. _She’s also very pretty,_ the back of my mind whispered quietly.

Sitting on the couch with an embroidery hoop and thread in my hands, I tensed up very suddenly upon realizing what I’d just thought.

I blinked in slight embarrassment, feeling a blush rise to my cheeks. Oh, dear, not again. The last time I’d found myself “girl-crazy” (in Sollux’s words) was with Vriska, and it had ended as horribly as it possibly could’ve. No, I was in _far_ too much of a stressful situation to be getting another crush, least of all a crush on an _alien._ What kind of young adult sci-fi novel was I living in? I shook my head, cursing under my breath as I returned to stitching another petal onto the embroidered blue flower. Certainly just because I thought that Rose was smart and interesting and pretty didn’t mean I had a _crush_ on her. I’d thought that about plenty of girls before, and nothing ever went anywhere with them (and that wasn’t because I was too nervous to ever even speak to them).

“Is something bothering you, Kan-nya?” Nepeta’s voice snapped me from my thoughts.

I looked up at her. She was sitting across the living room, lounging sideways on a dark grey armchair, holding a big notebook and a paintbrush, with little containers of paint balanced on one of the chairs arm. I sighed. “Oh, no, I was just lost in thought.”

Nepeta raised a knowing eyebrow, skeptical. “Wrong ans-fur. I saw that little blush! You’re thinking about someone, aren’t you?”

“Your mind is so oriented to romance Nepeta- not everything has to do with it,” I replied, discreetly avoiding the question.

“Is it Vriska?” Nepeta winked.

“No!” I exclaimed, all too quickly to be unsuspicious. “I’ve been over her for _sweeps.”_

She shrugged. “Worth a try. Who is it then? Is it Rose? Ooh, I bet that it’s Rose. I saw you talking to her last night and you were getting along… pretty well.” she waggled an eyebrow suggestively.

“Oh, for goodness sake, it’s not Rose.”

“Then why are you blushing?”

I set down my embroidery hoop in my lap with an irritated huff. “Because you’re embarrassing me by saying so!”

Nepeta frowned. “Fine, fine, no need to be a killjoy!” She made a deliberate stroke of her paintbrush, humming to herself. “I’m painting a purrcture of me and Equius beclaws this whole trip is stressing him out, and when he’s stressed he gets cranky! How about you, what are you embroidering?”

“Flowers,” I responded, not looking up from my work.

“Again?”

“Yes, I miss my garden,” I stared down at the pointed blue flower I was stitching. “Roxy might have some nice flowers here and there, but they just don’t cut it for me. Such a shame I could not have brought my plants on the escape pod with me- that would’ve been nice.”

Nepeta deflated a bit, like she felt bad for criticizing me for it. “Oh. Yeah, I would’ve liked that too. Then we coulda brought a bit of Alternia with us!”

I nodded in agreement, and both of us were silent for a while.

Eventually, I stood up from the couch after getting bored of my embroidery. Besides, I knew that Nepeta wouldn’t stop badgering me with questions and conversation if I stayed, which would include more inquisitiveness about my interest in Rose. The _last_ thing that I needed at that point was for Nepeta to start ‘shipping’ us. And combined with that, I just wanted some alone time. The experience of losing Karkat and Vriska had been stressful enough, I could hardly bear it- I was having a difficult time holding myself together without thinking about Rose.

Rose… maybe she would understand. Sometimes it _was_ easier to talk to a stranger about one’s problems then to one’s friends. Besides, I wouldn’t even know who to talk to- everyone was either horrible for that kind of conversation, or going through some emotional turmoil of their own. Perhaps I would just patiently wait for Rose to get home from her human school, and then we would be able to talk.

 _What a plan!_ I thought, as I walked down the hall towards my bedroom.

In fact, I’d almost managed to convince myself that my distress about Vriska and Karkat was the _only_ reason I wanted to talk to Rose, not because I liked her. I didn’t like her, not like that.

Muttering incoherently under my breath, I stood frustrated.

_Rose better get home soon._

⁂

After lunch, in the mid-afternoon, I found myself wandering the halls of Roxy’s house, and I came to notice a distinct consistency throughout the entire thing. Her house was large, expensive, modern, and incredibly grandiose. And because of all the vast hallways and crystal chandeliers, it made it harder to notice the patent neglect of the house itself. The sheer grandeur of it all hid the layers of dust that coated the shelves, the lightbulbs that flickered unreliably, the sticky spots on the floor of a mess never properly cleaned, the carpet that should’ve been vacuumed weeks ago, and the vaguely sweet yet rotten smell of alcohol that haunted the entire place.

The veritable disarray the place was in was shocking, the closer that I looked. Even if Roxy was too busy to clean, it was clear she was rich enough to hire someone to do it, or even to set up Rose with some cleaning chores! But no, it was terribly neglected, and that very disrepair only became more and more apparent throughout the house.

“How peculiar,” I kept whispering to myself. “How peculiar indeed.”

Eventually, I came back to the front entrance of the house and the rooms surrounding it, since it was clear it was one of the least run down spots of the home. Besides, I would be the first one to know when Rose got home.

The room directly in front of the front entrance was an inviting, parlor-looking room with a glass coffee table with yellowing seats surrounding it.

But, the best part of the room was the pictures that adorned the walls, as I noticed.

The first one, the one closest to the left, was a picture of Roxy holding a tiny, tiny version of a human, which I guessed was a baby human. The baby was asleep, and Roxy was smiling goofily.

The next was a picture of a human child, who I was able to recognize as Rose with her pale gold hair cut in a fashionable bob, with a violet headband. It was strange to see her as a chubby-cheeked child, without her black lipstick or eyeliner or surplus of dark clothes. She was struggling to hold a black purrbeast in her arms, and she was standing in front of a landscape I didn’t recognize, though it looked like a big city.

Then there was another picture of Rose, a little bit older, though still a child. She looked very proud in the picture, holding one of those blue ribbons you get for winning a contest. Behind her, was a big cardboard display, covered in writing I couldn’t read and drawings of monsters that held some resemblance to Gl'bgolyb.

The last photo appeared to be the most recent one. It pictured all four of the human kids, Rose, John, Jade, and Dave. They were much younger, they looked no older than six sweeps in this picture. The four of them were standing in an arcade, holding the longest spool of arcade tickets that I’d ever seen. Rose was daintily holding one end of the tickets, hand on her hip, wearing Dave’s sunglasses that she likely snatched off of him. Next to her was John, arms up in the air, mimicking a maniacal, cartoonish villain laugh with the tickets over his neck like a feather boa. Jade was doing finger guns, in mid-yell at the camera, with the tickets threaded through her hands. Then was Dave, holding the other end of the tickets, his face was buried in the crook of his elbow while the other arm was out in the air.

I chuckled. I could tell that it was a joke of some kind albeit I didn’t know the meaning. Maybe Terezi would have understood it- she was nothing if not a connoisseur of past, present, and future meme culture.

Suddenly, I heard a loud, metallic click from behind me, and I turned around to see what it was.

The front door had swung wide open, and Rose walked inside. She wore a slim, purple puffer jacket and a plaid lavender skirt with black fishnet tights underneath. Slung around her shoulders, she had a very full looking backpack. Her kitten-heeled boots made a loud _clack_ when she stepped onto the marble floor of the foyer.

“I’m home!” she called to no one in particular, and her eyes landed on me.

I smiled at her, waving slightly. “Hello, Rose. It’s lovely to see you, I’m glad that you’re back.”

“Likewise,” she replied. “Although, um, I suppose you’re already here!” She laughed nervously and I joined her, giving the conversation a level of awkwardness than any outsider most certainly would have cringed at. Rose closed the front door behind her, before allowing her backpack to slide off her shoulders, landing on the ground beneath the coat rack. She took off her jacket to reveal a lacy black top underneath, and hung up her jacket on the coat rack before walking forward.

“I was meaning to talk to you earlier,” I commented, trying to hide my excitement of her being home. “I figure you’d be coming in through this door, so in the meantime, I was just, um…”

“Looking at the pictures?” Rose filled in for me, bumping her shoulder into mine when she walked up to me.

My smile widened. “Why, yes. Could you tell me what is going on in them?”

“Of course! _That’s_ me as a baby, with my mother holding me,” she pointed to the first picture. “And _that_ one is me, holding our old cat Jaspers. We still lived in New York back then, we didn’t move here to Washington until I was ten or eleven. _This_ one is of me winning the sixth-grade Science Fair with my project about how Lovecraftian monstrosities could survive in the deep ocean. I made a kid cry. And then the _last_ one is of me and my friends at an arcade, with lots of tickets. We were around thirteen at the time, and we bought some candy and an electric disco ball, which John still has, I think.”

“You look celebratory.” I commented. 

“Yes!” Rose nodded, “I remember that day. It was seventh grade, right after Dave first came out as trans. Oh, we were all so proud of him! We had so much fun that day. Well, except for the fact that Dave was dabbing in this photo. God, it gives me whiplash every time I look at it.”

I giggled, covering my smile with my hand. “Well, it’s certainly a tad bit odd that Roxy decided to frame this one.”

Rose nodded solemnly. “Ah, the ways of my mother are a mystery to me.”

Her eyes lingered on the photo for a moment longer, almost wistfully. It was that moment when I really noticed her eyes, as well- her thick black eyeliner had been so distracting before. Rose’s eyes were a bright, striking purple that pierced through my soul. Eyes that carried an ocean of wisdom unknown to me, beautifully sad. Human eyes were already so different from trolls’ but Rose’s stood out to me. If other humans girls all had eyes like that, there would be no possible way for me to survive on this planet without melting at the sight of mysterious, pretty girls every five fucking minutes. _Shit._ I felt like hitting my head against the wall- I was doing the thing again. _I don’t like Rose, I just think she’s pretty. I don’t like her, I’ve known her for a week. Why does this always happen? Why do pretty girls have to be so nice to me?_

“Kanaya,” Rose said suddenly, looking over at me with a mystifying expression. “Could I ask you something, by chance?”

“Absolutely. Ask away.”

She bit her lip, and I noticed her wringing her hands. That couldn’t be good, she must be nervous about something. “It’s about… a certain one of your friends. Tall, clown makeup, kind of an idiot, wretchedly messy hair?”

“Gamzee?” I filled in. There was no one else who could possibly fit her description.

“Sure,” she replied, nodding in accord. “Well, today I couldn’t stop thinking about earlier this week, back on the night that you and I first met. Jade, my mother, and I were all helping Sollux and Tavros out of the shed and to the car, because they were injured or sick or whatever. Anyway, the clown guy- excuse me, _Gamzee_ stopped us in the doorway and seemed just… scary. What was up with that? Every day since then he’s just acted like a harmless stoner. Not to mention the fact that my mother was rather concerned by him, as she noticed that he’d been taking some kind of pill or medicine at every meal, which I can’t think of an explanation for.”

For a split second my heart dropped in my chest. It was hardly ideal if Gamzee intimidated the humans, given the shaky reputation he had even among my troll friends. Worst of all, as I realized, if something happened to Gamzee, Karkat wasn’t here to calm him down again. No one would know what to do.

Despite my dread, I didn’t let it show.

“Oh, yes,” I waved my hand dismissively, with a lighthearted laugh. “It just takes him a bit to warm up to people, and he can get a little bit protective when it comes to his friends. _Especially_ when it comes to Tavros- poor Gamzee’s been in love with him for over a sweep now. But don’t tell anyone I said that, I’m one of the few people that knows.”

Rose didn’t seem to accept this explanation alone. “Ah, I see.” She paused, and I could see the gears turning in her head. She took another step towards me, and despite the fact that she was shorter, she seemed to loom over me. “Are you sure that’s all?” she inquired sweetly.

Her face was only inches from mine, and I couldn’t break eye contact without making it awkward. So I stood there, probably blushing like an idiot, silent.

The gears began turning in my head as well. On one hand it would be dangerous to say what had happened with Gamzee, but on the other hand _he_ was dangerous, and the humans deserved to know. And, if I told her that, she might trust me more, and I could talk to her more about other things- maybe even get her advice on the troubles I was currently facing, the way that I’d originally intended to do. I went back and forth, weighing my options and the consequences of both. But, no matter what argument I brought up against telling her, my overriding desire to talk to Rose kept coming back. Surely I wouldn’t be betraying my friends' trust if I told her not to tell anybody. I trusted Rose, and I trusted to keep her words and not tell anyone.

I cleared my throat, and lowered my voice drastically. “Alright, I’ll tell you everything, but we can’t talk here, and you absolutely can’t tell _anyone._ Not your friends, not your mother, _no one.”_

“I understand,” Rose replied sternly. “And don’t worry, I know just the place.”

She turned and began to walk away, and I was quick to follow her. We walked through a hallway and up a flight of stairs, then throughout a set of open rooms and down another hallway, making a right and a left and another left. Rose really seemed to know where she was going and I could only hope that the more time I spent in Roxy and Rose’s house, the more I would understand the layout and know my way around, because at the moment I barely understood.

Finally, we reached a door at the end of one particular hallway. This door was heavier than the other ones, and it seemed to be made out of metal rather than wood. Rose made a comment of “This is it!” whilst gesturing to the door aimlessly and smiled.

With one hand she swung the door wide open, and with the other she took my wrist and led me inside.

The room was large and circular, and apart from where the door led into the room, all the walls and ceiling were made up of huge windows. The roof, being dome-shaped, provided a perfect view of the sky, albeit it was cloudy and bright as I looked up. There were blankets and pillows and comfy chairs around the room, making for a perfect reading nook or a place to hang out with friends. In the center of the room, there was an enormous telescope pointed towards the sky, the likes of which I’d only ever seen in movies. I couldn’t help but stare in awe, and spin on my foot as I looked around at the whole room.

“This is the observatory. Please, take a seat.” Rose sat down on a purple pillow on the floor. “I’d like to show you what it looks like at night, since you can’t see the stars during this time of day.”

I sat down on another pillow across from Rose. “Thank you, I think I’d like that.”

“So, tell me,” Rose scooted forward on the fluffy cushion she was sitting on. “What happened?”

I took a deep breath preparing myself for the story. “Alright. A little over a sweep ago, Karkat thought that it would be a brilliant idea to get Gamzee to stop taking the drugs that he’d consumed on a daily basis ever since he was about three. Karkat thought that he would overdose somehow, and really, he had good intention despite the outcome. It was fine for a while after Gamzee got off the sopor, but a few weeks after he had a run in with these two other purplebloods at clown church. They made fun of him pretty brutally for the way he practiced their religion, and Gamzee got really angry. He ended up killing both of them. You see, the drug  served as a blockade for any anger or sadness he felt. Once that blockade was removed, all it took was one little hassle for all of his repressed feelings to come out at once.”

This sent Rose silent. “Oh my god,” her voice was quiet and nervous. “You mean he killed them a metaphorical way right? He just kind of went crazy and freaked out on them, right?”

I blinked, confused by this anser. “What? No, he absolutely killed them to death. I’m fairly certain it made the news. He’d just never killed anyone before, so it was quite shocking.”

“Well I’d _assume_ that he’d never killed anyone!” Rose exclaimed, horrified. “I mean, not everyone is friends with a murderer! Jesus Christ, I can’t fathom why this isn’t so appalling to you! Have any of your _other_ friends killed anyone?!”

“Why, yes, of course!” I replied, still quite puzzled as to why Rose was so unsettled.

Rose's eyes widened. “Oh my god, you’re not joking?”

“Why would I be? Is murder not legal on Earth, or something?”

“Of _course_ it’s not legal!” Rose’s face twisted from appalled horror to pity. “What a terrible place you had to grow up on, you poor thing.”

I stared down at the ground, and both of us were quiet. It was clear that our planet’s opposing cultures were more different than I ever could’ve imagined. Considering the way she’d seemed so shocked by Gamzee only killing two people in a fit of rage, I didn’t know how to possibly explain all of the hundreds of children that Vriska willingly fed to her lusus. Or all the lusii that Feferi and Eridan killed to feed Gl'bgolyb. The fact that murder was illegal on Earth was enough to really put in perspective how different our planets really were.

“You’re troubled.” Rose commented, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes,” I replied, my voice no louder than a whisper. “I’ll start from the beginning.”

“There’s a lot to unpack, but with everything combined, I’m just so incredibly stressed right now. Yesterday morning Tavros and Terezi got into a big argument over Vriska, since Terezi was not taking her disappearance well, and Tavros was taking it a bit too well- he and Vriska have a history, and I can hardly blame him for being thrilled by her absence. Needless to say, she got mad at him for not taking it seriously, or something like that, and now they aren’t talking to each other. I don’t understand why Terezi felt the need to tell me that, and _that’s_ the thing. Everyone turns to me when they don’t know what to do, and suddenly it’s my job to solve the conflicts and my job to give advice and my job and my job help everyone when I can’t even help myself. It’s like I’m serving as a surrogate lusus, moirail, and auspistice for everyone who doesn’t have anybody else to talk to, because they think that I’m… I’m…”

“That you know what you’re doing when you actually don't?” Rose suggested, and I nodded in agreement. Rose continued, “I know how that feels. It sucks when everyone turns to you when they’re scared, even though you’re just as scared as everyone else.”

“Exactly!” I exclaimed. “It’s not like I don’t care, or that I don’t like helping them, it’s just that they don’t understand how stressed and confused I am by all of this. I’m not perfect, and I can’t fix everything when they expect me to, so I end up blaming myself even when I know it’s not my fault!” I sighed dejectedly, and fell backwards onto the pile of pillows on the floor. Lying there, I shut my eyes. “I don’t know what to do, I’ve never done this before. Everybody has their problems that they’re dealing with, and I have to fit them all into my schedule, and I suddenly don't have time for _my_ problems.”

“I understand completely- that really sucks.” Rose said, sympathy in her voice.

All of a sudden, I felt a soft warm brush up against my shoulder, and I opened my eyes to see Rose lying down on the floor next to my. Subtly, she took my hand, lacing our fingers together.

“I’m here if you ever need to talk,” she looked over at me with a tender smile.

I could feel the blush rising to my cheeks again, but I didn’t care. “You mean it?”

“Yes.” Rose brushed a strand of hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. “That’s what friends are for, after all.”

 _Friends_ , my thoughts whispered, _she said that we were friends._

“You as well, Rose,” I murmured. “I look forward to learning more about you and your planet, as you truly must be the most fascinating person I’ve met in a long time.”

“Likewise, Kanaya.”

And for the first time on our whole trip to Earth, I truly felt calm. As I gazed over as Rose, lying on the floor next to me, so close that our shoulders were touched and our fingers interlaced, I realized that for the first time since I’d left Alternia, I truly felt like I was at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ROSEMARY RIGHTS! ROSEMARY RIGHTS! ROSEMARY RIGHTS! I may be aro/ace but y'all better believe I appreciate the h*ck out of y'all wlws. I may have made some spelling/grammar mistakes so let me know if you catch any! Please comment and leave all of your feedback, every comment you leave is serotonin for me and F U E L for the next chapter!  
> In fact, I'd like to ask all of you a question. What characters (out of the cast we have here) did you wish interacted more in Homestuck's canon? What characters would you want to see have a conversation?  
> Love y'all! <3 See you next month


	14. Aliens exist and I’m failing English - Dave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEYYY Y'ALL!!!!!! We're back in Dave's pov and I'm so fuckin excited, it been too long since we've last seen The Boy. On a different note, the state where I live said that they're gonna lift the Stay At Home Order this Sunday! Part of me is like :D because I can go out and Do Things again but the other part of me is like :/ because idk if that's a good move on the governor's part. Seems kinda risky.  
> I hope that you all are doing good, and I hope that you enjoy our newest update.  
> *youtuber voice* Don't forget to kudos, comment, and subscribe.

School; my absolute worst nightmare. Both the word and the thing itself. When I was younger, I would always spell school as ‘shcool,’ every single time, among other mixed up and jumbled words. Even now I still had plenty of trouble with it, but at least now I knew I _had_ dyslexia, and now I knew how to handle it, so that at the very least I knew the proper spelling of school even if I kept getting it mixed up.

That didn’t stop my dumbass from failing English, apparently.

It was eight-thirty on a Tuesday morning, a time when no one was awake, and it was my first period class; English. It wasn’t that I disliked English itself, I was just god-awful at it, the class itself was okay. Our teacher, Mrs Jackson, was nice enough, even if she was a little sickeningly sweet when it came to most things. She even ran the school GSA, even though I didn't attend because I didn’t know any of the kids who were usually there. In her classroom, the lights were always off and everyone was always quiet, so it felt like the general atmosphere of the Lo-Fi study girl’s room. I was pretty sure she even played Lo-Fi music sometimes.

Even so, there was a sinking feeling of dread in my chest when she called my name during silent reading.

“Dave?” she said in that sickeningly sweet voice. “Come up here for a minute for a conference.”

My head shot up from the piece of paper I was sketching on. I had it wedged between the pages of a random book so that it vaguely looked like I was reading when I really wasn’t. But surely anyone with half a brain could’ve known that I was actually just drawing. I shut my book and walked up to the front of the classroom, weaving my way through the sea of desks placed at random around the room. Mrs Jackson was sitting at her desk with her computer screen open. What it was open to, as I noticed, was the gradebook.

_Ah, shit,_ was my very first thought. “Lemme guess, we’re up here to discuss how amazing I’m doing, and that I might just need to skip ahead to AP English three months into the school year.”

She offered a cheap, relatively fake laugh. “I wish I could say we were. Why don’t you take a seat?” she gestured to the chair set up across from her at her desk.

Tentatively, I sat down.

“Have you checked on your grades recently, Dave?”

“Can’t say I have.” I replied with a nonchalant shrug. The website we used to check our grades on gave me genuine anxiety every time I logged it. Even if I wanted to look at my grades I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to.

“You really ought to,” Mrs Jackson continued. “So, I would assume that you’re not aware that you have a _D_ in my class, which I might even say is impressive, since it’s only October.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “What can I say? I live to impress.”

She sighed, casting concerned glances between me and her computer screen. “I understand that you might not like reading or writing, and that it’s even more… difficult for you with both ADHD and dyslexia. I sympathize with that, I really do. But really, Dave, sometimes you just need to _try_ at least to _find_ something that you might like! School doesn’t have to be as miserable as you’re making it for yourself. I know that you can do the work, you just don’t do it. So please, let me know how I can help you out with this, because if you don’t start trying to get your grades back up, I’m going to have to send a call home to your parents.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You can send a call home _now_ for all it matters. Rest assured, my bro will absolutely not care.”

“ _I_ do.” Mrs Jackson insisted. “Dave, you know that if you’re dealing with trouble at home, or social trouble at school, you can tell me. Really, if there’s anything going on I’d be happy to help you as much as I can.”

My head tilted downwards as I stared at my feet.

There was a part of me—a crazy, masochistic part of me—that wanted to tell her. Explain the whole story about how we found the trolls, lost two of them to government agents in Area 51, and how they’re hidden in Rose’s mom’s house. But, I knew how absolutely fucking ridiculous that was. I could easily picture that scenario, with everyone in class awkwardly staring and listening in as I explained how I, a high school junior with no talents or brain cells, discovered actual aliens and was currently on the run from the government who didn’t actually know I was on the run from them. Mrs Jackson would probably send me down to counseling, who would then pass me off as a nutjob teenger looking for attention and uneventfully send me back to class where every single eavesdropping kind awaited, preparing to bully me even more than they already did. 

John and Rose and Jade would all freak out once I told them. Before we know it, all the kids would tell their friends about the crazy kid in English class and then all of those kids would tell their parents. Assuming that the CIA was still going door-to-door, then the parents would tell the CIA and then our entire plan would get figured out. The rest of the trolls would be taken and put in Area 51, and we’d all be unceremoniously arrested and possibly tortured for information. Wait, not tortured; that’s a war crime. But, we’d still be interrogated and thrown in prison for life, never to see the light of day nor the trolls ever again.. What an absolutely disastrous plan.

I looked up from my shoes to see Mrs Jackson still staring at me, awaiting my response. I dully come to realize she didn’t ride on that whole train of thought with me, watching it get knocked off the tracks and explode into a clusterfuck of overthinking. I blinked silently.

But finally, I nodded sagely. “Right. I’ll let you know if something comes up.”

“Great,” she smiled. “Now how about your grades and all those missing assignments- what can you do about that?”

“Would you accept late work?”

“You know my policy on that.” she responded. “Turn it in completely with no mistakes and I’ll give you half credit, but I’ll give you full if you go above and beyond.”

I went quiet again, but offered a small nod. “Thanks. Can I go back to my seat now.”

She hummed a chipper ‘ _mhm’_ and turned back to her computer screen.

I would’ve sprinted back to my desk if I wasn’t afraid of bringing too much attention to myself. Maybe I could’ve turned it into a joke- after all, who doesn’t love the deadpan class clown who’s failing all of his classing only 3 months into the school year. Yeah, get a load of this future starving artist bastard who has a 2.5 GPA and no hope of getting into college because he spends all his time doodling ninjas sword-fighting all over the paper he’s supposed to be taking notes on. Now, watch as this elusive creature pretends to not care. Amazing.

For a moment, as I sat back down in my seat, I considered myself a disappointment. But then, I remembered I had no one to disappoint; just whatever cruel God that made me and my own wishful thinking.

The rest of the class we spent on our classic literature unit, particularly on overanalyzing _The Great Gatsby_ . I wasn’t a fan of classic literature or _The Great Gatsby,_ but I sat through it.

My notebook page had only 70% doodles, and a whole 30% notes. Must be a new record.

\--------------------

After English I had my photography class, which was one of my favorite classes if not my favorite. It went by uneventfully, without any surprise ‘conferences’ about my rapidly dropping grades.

Science, my third hour class, was less mundane. I nearly beat the ass of some bitch-ass motherfucker named _Allen,_ who was the scourge of my very existence, as I had to sit right next to him in science. He carried all of his stuff with him in what was basically a camper’s backpack to every class, and he had the ugliest voice I’d ever heard. Whenever he spoke he sounded like a frog choking on an entire bucket of landfill garbage while simultaneously gurgling and spitting everywhere. A pseudo-intellectual with a superiority complex was what he was. I’d never forget how he read a poem allowed to his sophomore English class about how he thought the poor people and stupid people should be enslaved.

On top of that, he was transphobic and constantly mock me for being dyslexic. Needless to say, I couldn’t wait for when we would next switch seats. Point was he called me a slur under his breath and I _rightfully_ threatened to remove his spinal cord with a pair of scissors. But Allen- being the snitch he was- ran to tell the teacher and suddenly _I_ was the one in trouble.

Look, sometimes, you just need to threaten a pretentious rich kid with great violence to get them to leave you alone.

Luckily, lunch was right after science, and I’d finally get to see my friends again.

Once science ended, I left straight for the cafeteria, not wanting to waste any time putting my stuff away, as I knew how long the lunch line could get if you didn’t get there early. Three years of getting the school lunch and inadvertently wasting time to eat by waiting in line had taught me the hard way.

Before I could step inside the cafeteria, I noticed all three of my friends standing in the doorway, presumably waiting for me.

Jade was the first to wave me over, giving an overly enthusiastic, “Dave! Over here!”

Plenty of the other kids feeding into the lunchroom gave her a weird look when she did this. There were a lot of kids at school who didn’t like Jade, and said that she was annoying, but I was sure that they were just jealous because Jade was good at everything. Grades, sports, music, art. The thing was, nobody had the guts be mean to her face, because she was just too nice. I envied her in that regard, as did John and Rose. Nobody hesitated to be mean to _our_ face.

I awkwardly half-jogged over to where my friends were standing, pointing finger guns at them. “Aw, you guys waited for me- I’m so flattered. Currently feeling that ‘how to handle fame’ meme.”

Jade giggled. “Yeah, Dave, we wouldn’t even know what to do without you here.”

“Actually,” Rose cut in, “We were waiting for you so we could let you know that we’re not eating in the cafeteria today. One of my teachers said that her classroom was going to be totally empty during this time, and said we could eat lunch there if we wanted.”

“Because, you know,” John said, “We need somewhere to, ahem, _discuss_ the conditions of some certain special someones that we don’t really want to discuss in public, as to not come off as, ah…” John circled his finger around his temple and whistled, mimicking the _‘crazy’_ motion so often seen in movies. “But don’t worry, we’ll be safe and nobody will know.”

Rose lightly smacked John in the arm. “John, enough with your convoluted connotations,” she hissed, “You don’t know who could be listening.”

“I know,” John grumbled. “Why do you _think_ I used such ‘convoluted connotations’?”

“It’s totes suspicious, dude,” I raised my eyebrows, nodding in agreement with Rose.

“Well you’re making it more suspicious by saying that!” John protested.

Jade stepped in before we could argue further. “All of you shut up!! We’re gonna be suspicious no matter what. Let’s just go.”

“Sorry, dude, I’ve still gotta buy lunch,” I sighed melodramatically. “Wait, _shit,_ the lunch line is probably super long by now. Um, you guys just wait here, and I’ll go grab my lunch. _Don’t. Go anywhere._ See y’all in a few, bye!”

Not waiting for a response as to not let any time to waste, I actually sprinted down the side of the cafeteria.

After a few steps, I jumped from sprinting to rolling on my Heelys, which worked very well, and I ended up going extremely fast on the smooth linoleum floors. In the direction that I was headed, was the place where they actually served the shitty public high school food. Across from where I was rolling, there was a setup of dozens upon dozens of mismatched tables. Round and rectangular tables, all with more chairs crowded around them than there was supposed to, and those said chairs were all crowded with students. 

The ‘cafeteria map’ or defined cliques weren’t nearly as prominent as they are in, say, Mean Girls, but it was still clear where everyone sat. The group of nerdly incels didn’t sit with the Hot Cheeto girls. The Hot Cheeto girls didn’t sit with the football team. The football team didn’t sit with the crackhead band kids. And nobody, no matter who they were, _nobody_ sat at the Unstable Table; the normal sitting place me and my friends. It wasn’t that we were isolated, or nobody liked us- everybody just didn’t was to associate themselves with a space-obsessed Nicolas Cage stan, a mean goth lesbian, a girl with a _gardening_ addiction, and a sword-nerd always wearing sunlasses whose legal guardian is a well known _porn director._ I wouldn’t want to hang out with us either, if I was them.

As for the lunch line; it wasn’t as bad as I feared, but I still wished I’d gotten there earlier.

I ordered a burger, three bags of Doritos (because one bag only had about 7 chips in it), a cheese stick, a carton of apple juice, and an orange that the lunch lady forced me to get because apparently I _had_ to get a fruit or vegetable with my lunch. I wasn’t going to eat it, but hey. Nutrition. I ended up having to pay out of pocket because my account was low on money- I’d have to remind Bro to refill it.

Once I’d balanced all of my food onto a navy blue school lunch tray, I Heely-ed back over to where my friends were still waiting for me at the cafeteria door.

“That was quick,” Jade commented cheerfully.

I shrugged. “What can I say? I was so stoked to talk to you just like I do every day that I literally transformed into Sonic the Hedgehog.”

John snorted with laughter.

“Very funny, Dave,” Rose huffed irritably, but I could tell from how her upper lip twitched that she really did find it funny. “Well now, let’s all get going then. Chop chop, lunch only lasts so long.”

We all followed Rose out of the lunchroom and down the hallway.

Many other small groups of kids were gathered in spots in the halls. Little clusters of tables meant for studying were in the corners, and plenty of kids were gathered. Because our school didn't have lunch periods, and instead we all ate at the same time, the cafeteria wasn’t nearly enough to hold all of the students. Most of the seniors and some juniors went off campus for lunch, but there still wasn’t enough space for all the kids. Every open chair outside of the classrooms was filled, and there were still kids sitting on the floor.

We walked up a flight of stairs to the school’s second story and walked down the hall of the history and social studies department. Rose was in AP History, so I could only assume that was where we were going. I’d heard Rose mention how nice her AP History teacher was, after all.

Rose finally stopped at the propped open door of one classroom.

She pushed the door of the classroom open and led us inside. The empty classroom was dark, and Jade was first to flip on the lights. Rectangular tables were neatly placed around the room in rows and columns. The teacher’s desk sitting next to a large smartboard and whiteboard was empty, with no teacher—or anyone else—in the room.

“Nice,” I commented. I sat down at the table set about in the middle of the room, setting down my lunch tray in front of me.

John, Rose, and Jade followed suit, starting to open up their lunchboxes and putting their food down in front of them.

“So tell us, Rose,” Jade said, leaning forward, “What’s happening with the trolls? Are they okay?”

Rose exhaled through her teeth, pursing her lips. “Nobody has died yet. There’s been some turmoil over the subject of food, actually. I believe we’re going to need to buy significantly more groceries than we normally do, as a two person household has just added ten hungry alien teenagers to it. Sollux and Roxy hacked into the CIA Area 51 data, as you all know, and we have a 24 hour live feed of their security cameras. We don’t know for sure what’s happening with the kidnapped trolls, Karkat and Vriska, but I believe and hope that my mother is forming some semblance of a plan as to how to get them _out_ of said Area 51.”

“And what kind of plan do we need?” John asked, “Area 51 is all the way in _Nevada,_ a whole two states away. They must’ve transported the trolls by plane! How are we supposed to get in and out of there discreetly even if we came up with a plan to break in.”

“I don’t know, do I look like someone who knows how to break into Area 51 to re-kidnap a couple of kidnapped aliens?” Rose crossed her arms.

Jade interrupted before John and Rose could start bickering again. “Look, guys. Area 51 is the most well-guarded government facility that we know of. It’s not gonna be an easy feat getting in there! No amount of guns, strategy, or artillery we have could match up to theirs. If we’re not smart about this, we could doom ourselves, so we _need_ to think; what do we have that Area 51 doesn’t that we could use to break out Karkat and Vriska?”

Neither John nor Rose had an answer to that.

“I can name a couple things, actually,” I said, half-raising my hand awkwardly like I was in a class with a cool teacher who didn’t care if you blurted out the answer instead of raising your hand. “Jade, your granddad owns Skaianet- a multi-million dollar corporation specifically dedicated to making advanced technology A.K.A some of the coolest shit I’ve ever seen. I don’t see why we can let your Grandpa in on the troll situation, because holy fuck that’d be some help we can’t get anywhere else.”

Jade hummed, thinking this over with a nod. “That’s true, you have a good point.”

“It might be a little risky, though” John reminded her. “Your Grandpa is super nice, don’t get me wrong, but he’s the most paranoid person I’ve ever met.”

“Also true,” Jade nodded solemnly.

“Don’t worry, that’s not all,” I went on. “I plan to ask more about this later today when we talk with the Troll Posse, but just think. We really quickly brushed over the fact that some trolls have crazy X-Man ass looking magic powers. I saw Aradia talk to ghosts with my own two eyes, and that’s not even the half of it. She’s fucking telekinetic- that first night John and I found the trolls’ shipwreck, Aradia ripped that shit apart with her goddamn telekinesis powers to let the trolls out of the wreckage. Sollux is in the same boat, from what I’ve heard, but I also heard something about laser vision? I don’t know if that’s real but if it is… Shit, man. Breaking into Area 51 would be significantly easier with the help of a creep telekinetic psychic and a dude with fucking laser vision. Anyway, shit’s whack, those are just my thoughts on it.”

Rose narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Are you suggesting that we send two unstable, unarmed, ridiculously powerful teenagers, both of whom are the very aliens that the government is attempting to kidnap and study, directly into the prison in which the other aliens are trapped, completely ignoring how absolutely _astoundingly_ reckless that is? Are you out of your mind?”

“Well, I figured we’d have more of a plan than that, but, uh, yeah,” I nodded awkwardly averting her eyes. “I guess that’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

Silence hung in the air at the table as all of my friends thought over my plan.

No one spoke, but I wasn’t discouraged. It was only the first idea- it didn’t _need_ to be good.

“On a different note,” Rose cleared her throat as she spread butter on a bread roll. “Next week is Halloween, the best holiday of all time. I assume that we’re all still going trick-or-treating, since we haven’t gotten any less lame than we were last year, and nobody is going to invite the weird gay kids to their Halloween parties. My point being; what are we planning to dress up as? Should we do coordinated costumes again?”

“Ooh, that’s a good point!” Jade agreed. “Hmm, I don’t really know what to go as. I haven’t given it much thought with how stressful these past few days have been!”

The group’s attention shifted to John, who looked confused. “What are you looking at me for?”

“Because you always have the best costumes, dude.” I half heartedly explained with a shrug, and both Rose and Jade nodded in confirmation.

“Oh,” he blinked in shock. “Well, thanks I guess, but I don’t really know. I mean, if we can’t come up with something we can just use Ghostbusters as a backup since we still have the costumes, but I don’t really want to do the same thing two years in a row.”

“Fair enough,” Rose commented. “It was never that flattering for me anyway.”

“Yeah, I get that,” I nodded as I took a bite out of my burger. “Frankly, I think it’s safe to say that this’ll be our weirdest Halloween so far no matter what we dress up as.

There was a general murmur of agreement among my friends.

“Would be weirder if the trolls were out trick-or-treating with us!” Jade exclaimed “I mean, I know we can’t for _obvious_ reasons, but like, it’d be so cool. And what a way to immerse them into Earth’s culture, or at least a portion of it. Because- wait, oh my God!!” Jade’s eyes widen suddenly in an excited realization. “Holy shit, guys! The trolls have probably never even heard of Halloween before! They wouldn’t have some kind of troll Halloween!”

“Yes, you’re right about that,” Rose raised an acknowledging eyebrow.

John tilted back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. “You gotta admit, though, it seems like it’d be right up their ally.”

“Makes _me_ wonder what kind of holidays trolls actually have,” I said, “Like, fuck it dude, what kind of troll customs would there even be? What, ‘International We Conquered Some Particular Planet Day?’ Or, who knows, maybe holidays are only for the higher-ups, the um, um- _highbloods!_ Yeah that’s the word. Maybe there’s like, a troll Christmas celebrating Troll Jesus or whatever equivalent they have, but again, they probably don’t have Troll Christianity. Wait a fucking second, do trolls even have religion, and then religious holidays by extension? Holy shit that opens a new can of worms. What kind of-”

“Dave,” Jade interrupted gently. “I think we get it.”

I snickered at my own rambling. “Right, yeah.”

“You bring up a good point, though,” Rose snapped her fingers vaguely in my direction “The other day I was speaking with Kanaya and I got her on the subject of-” Rose cut herself off suddenly, seemingly rethinking her words. “Well, you see, we ended up talking a bit about troll culture. In case we need any more confirmation that troll society is… outstandingly violent, I do have that now. On top of that, I do actually believe she mentioned that trolls have religion. Some do, at least.”

All three friends looked over at Rose. I had the sneaking suspicion that Rose wasn’t telling the full story or at least that there was some major detail she chose not to mention.

“Ooh,” Jade hummed thoughtfully, “What was it?”

Rose seemed unsure of herself, rubbing the palm of her hand against one of her temples. “You might think I’m crazy, but believe me, this is just what Kanaya said. She didn’t talk much about the religion itself, and it could’ve just been the translator acting up, so I don’t actually know-”

“Get to the point, Rose,” John crossed his arms.

“She said something about ‘clown church,’ okay?” Rose exclaimed sheepishly.

We stared at her in silence for a few seconds.

It wasn’t long before I started laughing hysterically. “Sorry, fucking ‘clown church’? Oh my god, that’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. Catch me at clown church, y’all, at the straight up fucking clown religion, praising the clown Jesus. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.”

Rose exhaled through her nose, looking very exasperated. “Yes, yes, it’s very funny. Again, I’m only repeating what Kanaya said. I would’ve asked about it but the conversation got… off topic.”

“Right,” John crooned, nudging Rose in the shoulder teasingly. “But whatever, it doesn’t matter.”

I grinned. “Somehow I can’t think of a better holiday than some kind of international Clown Day that has some kind of religious significance. Damn, I’ll need to ask one of the trolls the next time I see them. Now that I think about it, we can go over to Rose’s place today. Don’t tell me y’all have other obligations because I know you don’t.”

“Fair enough,” Jade admitted. “But, we should hang out whether it’s to visit the trolls or not.”

“What else is there to do, though?” John replied.

Jade nodded thoughtfully. “True, true.”

My gaze returned to my food, where I noticed that ketchup was streaming from the side of my burger, onto my lunch tray. I huffed silently, wiping it off with one of Rose’s napkins.

Suddenly, Jade sighed sadly, resting her chin in her hands on the table as she leaned over her lunch. “No matter if they have a troll Halloween or not, it still sucks ass that the trolls won’t be able to come trick-or-treating with us! They’ll probably even have to be shut up in their rooms too, so that they’re not seen by any trick-or-treaters that come to Roxy’s house.”

“You know why they can’t come.” John rested a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder. “They’re so obviously not human, and if any cops or cop-bootlickers see them, we’re all toast.”

Jade nodded, but it didn’t cheer her up at all. “Yeah, I know.”

There was a moment of solidarity and a strange kind of silent mourning. That’s when my mind began to race, and wonder about what John said. 

The trolls are obviously not human, anyone would know that, but out of Halloween it’s kind of the _point_ to be ‘not human.’ Hypothetically we wouldn’t even need to disguise or hide the trolls on a night like Halloween, because they’re already hiding in plain sight. My eyebrows rose at my own genius and I slowly began to devise a plan. _We’re going to need an explanation of how Halloween works, a plan to convince Roxy, an easy escape plan from police, and a shit-ton of grey face paint._

I stood up in sudden excitement, knocked my chair backwards and slammed my hands down on the table. My initial blank face melted into a grin.

“Guys, I just had the best fucking idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lmao when I originally started this fic back in summer of last year, I though I'd have the Halloween chapter out on Halloween of 2019. What a fool I was, I say, what a fool. But nonetheless, prepare yourselves, I've been planning this shit for months.  
> Please comment all of your speculations and theories as to what you think is gonna happen, or just general feedback! I make sure to reply to every comment and I love and treasure every one of them!  
> Remember to drink water and get enough sleep, and I'll see you all soon!


	15. A Recipe for Nightmares and Despair - Karkat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH SHIT OH FUCK IT'S SUPER FAST UPDATE HOURS! Not only is this update super quick, but it's also super long! Note that I did have most of this chapter pre-written or heavily outlined, so updates this quick probably won't be commonplace. Nonetheless, I hope you guys, gals, and pals all enjoy it!  
> Note- there's significant gore/body horror in this chapter, so please be wary.

There was a steady rhyme and rhythm to the facility. As time passed, I learned the patterns, even though I didn’t know how long we’d really been there, since we couldn’t count the days and I didn’t count the cycles.

Because I had nothing else to do, I would sleep. While I was sleeping, Vriska would pace around the cell and talk to herself. She woke me up every few hours, we were brought a meal by one of the soldiers. The meal was always shitty and never filling, but at least we had something to eat. After eating my portion, I would get a drink of water, use the load gaper, and go back to sleep. 

Every three meals, the soldiers would enter our cell and take us to that other room where we were tied to chairs. They would take syringes full of our blood for god-knows-why, and then ‘question’ us. I continuously _tried_ to explain to their tiny, sad brains that I honestly couldn’t understand them and that I needed my translator ring, but to no avail. I even tried miming a ring on my finger, but that just made the guards mad as they thought I was flipping them off again. Idiotic, primitive humans didn’t know what translator tech was.

Rinse and repeat. It was always boring, but it was getting even more so as it went on.

Surprisingly enough, the Signless didn’t speak to me for the time that I was sleeping. Maybe he wanted to wait until I was less mad at him. It wasn’t really working, but I appreciated the ability to go to sleep without being tormented by my supposed ‘ancestor’ sweet-talking me into overthrowing the fucking empire.

But, unfortunately, after I’d gone back to sleep after our most recent meal. Sure enough, I woke up in the empty, grey dreamscape again.

Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled.

“For fuck’s sake, what now?” I shouted at the sky, stomping my foot indignantly.

**_Ah, so you’re still upset._ **

“Of course I’m upset!” I shrieked furiously. “You think I’d be all purrbeasts and rainbows and smiles after being fucking kidnapped?!”

**_You may be used to taking your anger out on others, but I won’t accept it. You need to understand that your situation is not my fault._ **

“Then stop acting so smug about it!”

I kicked the ground, and ripples traveled across the surface from the point where I kicked it. Maybe I wouldn’t mind the Signless so much if he wasn’t acting so insufferable.

I sighed, defeated. “Just… get it over with. Whatever you’re gonna tell me or show me, just do it. Whatever. I don’t care.”

**_Very well. Though I may have not mentioned it, the Dolorosa was killed by her old master in slavery. As for the Disciple, she was eventually found by Subjuggulators, who tortured and killed her._ **

“Ooh, pleasant,” I commented coolly.

**_And somehow, neither of those were the worst fate one of my followers suffered._ **

My vision was met by an overwhelming amount of deep fuschia. I winced in disgust as I felt the squishy, almost alive ground beneath me. The feel of the ground was made worse by the fact that I still wasn’t wearing any shoes. This was different from the other dreams, which had played out in an artificial, movie-like way. But this? I could look down and see myself, turn around and see all my surroundings, and feel the ground beneath my bare feet. Wherever I was, it was like I was actually there.

The evidently squishy ground was made of tendrils, as I noticed. They were all stretched across the ground, twisted and pulsing, leading to something. The tendrils slanted upward as they all were wrapped around a _troll_. A real troll, caught in the creepy, web-like trap. This troll’s arms were held high above his head, and fuschia tendrils wrapped around them too, connecting him to the ceiling as well. I noticed that the ceiling looked just the same as the floor. The tendrils forever kept this troll in an uncomfortable, upright, stretched position.

Tentatively, I stepped around to get a better look at him from the front.

He was a goldblood, evidently from the doubled horns on either side of his head. They looked awfully similar to Sollux’s horns, though much larger. His head was completely slumped over, and his sharp features were only illuminated by the occasional spark of electricity his body gave off.

**_A friend, an asset, a weapon. The nature of a troll is in the eye of the beholder, is it not?_ **

“Yeah, sure. Who is he?” I asked, waving my hand in front of his face. He didn’t respond. His eyes were obscured by a worn pink muzzle over his face.

**_To me, a beloved friend._ **

I crossed my arms, looking up at the ceiling aimlessly, knowing the voice came from in my own head. “Do you mean that as in your stupid thing about loving everybody- even your enemies, or did you actually know the guy?”

**_I knew him well, child. Though he may have changed since then. He wished for nothing more than to die at my side, but now spends eternity trapped in a jumbled mind._ **

“Bull and shit!” I said angrily. “You lived, like, two thousand sweeps ago and golds don’t live that long. Definitely not golds who are plugged into battleships.”

**_He was cursed to live forever as a battery. All he knows is pain as his power is slowly drained away, bit by bit._ **

“Yikes,” I murmured. Of all the horrible fates that a troll had the potential to suffer, that definitely sounded like one of the worst. There was a long pause where the Signless didn’t respond and I didn’t speak, but I didn’t quite know what to say either. “Can he see me?” I craned my neck to put my face in front of his, waving my hand wildly again.

**_He would have no sense of your presence even if you were actually here._ **

I huffed. “You’re really stupidly cryptic, you know that? What do you mean ‘no sense’ of me?”

**_Well, I wouldn’t know first hand, but being blind, deaf, and mostly braindead can do that to someone._ **

“Oh…” I winced, embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t… But, okay, I’m not actually here, good to know. It feels really real, though, this is different from the other dreams. What exactly is so different?”

**_For in the other dreams, I was showing you glimpses of the past, but here, I’m showing you something as it happens right now, as we speak._ **

“Huh.”

I guess I figured it had something to do with that, though it brought up a lot of questions about the Signless’s supposed ‘limited omnipotence.’ It can’t be all omnipotence, since I knew he couldn’t see the future or anything, and he could only show me the things in the past that he _knew_ about. Not just _anything._ But, could he show me anything that was happening in the present, from what he alluded to.

“Wait, so if you could show me things that are happening now,” My thinkpan was racing with thoughts of hope. “Then you could show me where my friends are! Just to let me know if they’re okay! You could show me the place me and Vriska are trapped in, but just my subconscious seeing it, so I can walk around and find a way out!”

**_That I certainly could. You’re very clever, Karkat._ **

He wasn’t just calling me ‘child’ anymore, which felt a little bit better. The compliment made me swell up with pride, but it could just be my lack of interaction getting to me, and that fact that being alone with someone like Vriska for extended periods of time could easily drive you insane.

**_Now, I can show you that, but not now. Haven’t you noticed a pattern in your past two dreams?_ **

I thought about this for a minute. _Pattern, pattern, what pattern?_ What did the last two dreams have in common, again? “Oh, did this guy have one of your club necklaces too?”

**_Yes. Look closer._ **

I rocked up on my toes to get a better look, and I saw a small glint of metal. There was a chain hanging down his neck, just like the chains of the other necklaces, though as I looked at this one it was confusing. I couldn’t quite tell where his skin ended and the necklace began. The pendant itself was hanging loosely in front of him, and if it would be easier if only I could see it in a little brighter light-

_BAM._

I jumped about four feet into the air in surprise. Somebody had just slammed open a door that I didn’t realize was there at first. I turned around, and my initial startle was made worse by who I saw walking into the room.

“Ugh, clogged again? For cod’s sake, you can’t just do anyfin other than this shit, huh?”

She was an incredibly tall woman, as least eight feet by her person alone. Her tall horns stretched up another good five feet, and they were adorned with jewelry. Rings and piercings of gold were strung all over her horns, with little gold chains that connected the jewels together, and earrings bedazzled her seadweller fins. Dark grey skin with delicate pink glasses on her face, along with a head full of so much long, thick hair that it trailed on the floor and out the door. A black and fuschia bodysuit emblazoned with the Pisces symbol, with even more gold jewelry in the form of bracelets, anklets, rings, and necklaces. Just looking at her for one second, I was shaking with fear. I knew who this was.

"That's the fucking Condesce!" I cried, my voice breaking as I backed away. 

**_Yes... it is. Don't panic, she can't see you._ **

'The Condesce' was repeating through my head in a complete panic, as I was successfully failing at the Signless's advice to stay calm. The Condesce. Her Imperious Condescension, Empress of all Trollkind, the Baroness, the Batterwitch, the Conqueror of Worlds.

The words ‘Don’t panic’ seemed useless and irrational to my fear-frozen thinkpan.

The Condesce stepped forward and grabbed the goldblood by the chain that was hanging around his neck, forcibly tilting his head upwards.

As for the goldblood, he let out only a tiny, helpless groan. His brows furrowed ever so slightly and his face changed from neutral sorrow into an agonized grimace. Deaf and blind, he still knew what was going on. He still knew who stood in front of him, looming over him with such intimidation and power. My eyes widened as I stared, fixed at the scene in front of me, and I came to see a clearer view of the goldblood’s necklace. No wonder it was so hard to differentiate between the chain of the necklace- _it was literally melted to his flesh._ I felt like fainting or screaming or throwing up, but instead I stood petrified in frozen mortification.

My bloodpusher was pounding in my chest, terrified- adrenaline was rushing to every part of my body including my head, making it throb like I could hear my own heartbeat ringing in my ears.

She slapped the goldblood hard across the face. His head snapped to the side as he began to hack and cough violently. On the floor to his side, he spat out a gross, oozing kind of blood and what I was pretty sure was one of his teeth.

The Condesce shook out her hand like she’s touched something repulsive, and her upper lip curled in disgust. “Sea, I walk all the wave down here to pay you a visit, and that’s how you act? Fuckin’ shell, I ain’t got a clue why I still kelp you around. A dozen or two other golds could do your job for a good carple sweeps, and we’d all like to put your disgusting ass out of your misery. It’d do me a favor, that’s for shore.”

Her voice was starting to muffle, and it wasn’t because of the dreamscape. Blood rushing through my ears deafened me as I stood there, staring.

**_Karkat, if you don’t calm down I won’t be able to keep talking to you._ **

I ignored the Signless’s voice as I silently began to back away

**_You need to listen to me, I’m trying to help you._ **

“Just shut up, shut the fuck up,” I tried to shout but it came out as the tiniest whisper- so quiet that I could hardly even hear myself. “I can’t believe I ever thought I could trust you. You must be _trying_ to get me killed.”

**_I already said she can’t see or hear you, now for goodness sake, calm down._ **

Even if I wanted to calm down, I didn’t think I could.

Instead, I ran. Away from the Condesce as she still stared at the goldblood slave, whoever he was I didn’t care. Every survival instinct that I’d harbored and honed to be second nature ever since I was a wriggler was screaming at me; _Run,_ they all shrieked, _she’ll kill you. You’re dead meat if you stay._ And who was I to ignore that? If I had the chance to get away from her I had to take it.

The disembodied voice of the Signless was echoing in my head as it faded and became more and more incoherent.

**_Sta…need to…going...hurt… Listen to me… please...down…_ **

I ran to the door of the room that the Condesce initially came from. I stumbled over my feet clumsily, and missed the doorway. I braced for impact into the wall, but it didn’t matter- I’d passed right through it like a ghost, and I felt _nothing._

Nothing was here. These walls weren’t, the floor wasn’t, the Condesce wasn’t, and I wasn’t.

Just like how I passed through the wall like nothing, my eyes widened in terror as I began to fall. I passed right through the floor and kept, falling, falling, falling through space.

\--------------------

I woke up in a cold sweat.

I was lying on the fabric-covered slab I’d been sleeping on for the past few days, breathing heavily from the initial shock of the dream.

I stood up, and swung my legs over the side of the slab and winced as they touched the cold floor. Nervously, I glanced around the room. Everything seemed to be just how it was when I’d fallen asleep.

Despite all of that, I took note that Vriska wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I glanced over to the human load gaper, but the stall door was wide open and she wasn’t there either. Despite being mildly perturbed, I brushed it off. Maybe the humans had taken her in for more questioning. She’d been in a horrible mood the last time we’d gotten back from it, so I wasn’t terribly enthused by that notion.

I stood up and took a few steps forward into the center of the cell.

There were no guards posted at the door. As I looked around more through the glass walls of the cell, I noticed that there were no guards _anywhere._ It was like the entire place had been completely abandoned, leaving only me behind. To further examine the emptiness of the facility, I turned around.

Upon doing so, I instantly yelped in surprise.

Standing right behind me was… Kanaya?

I jumped backwards from how dumbfounded I was. She was staring at me with a curious, concerned expression that was so typical of Kanaya, but something was deeply wrong. Her eyes were completely white and devoid of life. A small trail of jade-green blood trailed from the corner of her mouth, dripping down her chin and onto the floor. She was disheveled, with hair and makeup all messy, which wasn’t like her at all. My eyes trailed downwards, and I was hit with a wave of horror as I saw a huge, gaping hole in her abdomen, completely soaked with fresh blood.

“Is something bothering you, Karkat?” she asked, but it wasn’t her voice. It was older, less pronounced, almost sing-song. Her lips were moving and forming the words, but it wasn’t her voice. “You look upset. Would you like to talk to me about it?”

“I…” My voice trailed off as I slowly began to back away from her.

My body slammed into something that moved and squealed with surprise as I rammed into it. “Eek!” a female voice that I didn’t recognize responded. “Uh oh, you’ve gotta watch where you’re going, Karkitty! You really gave me a furight!”

I glanced behind me to see Nepeta, smiling as ever. She was even more disheveled than Kanaya, with the same blank, white eyes. She staggered as she walked, with greenish bruises dotted across her face like messy splatters of paint. She giggled when she saw me, as if she wasn’t affected at all by her beaten up, heavily injured state.

“What’s up, purrbeast got your tongue?” she winked, displaying a severe black-eye

Though I couldn’t see myself, I probably looked like I was witnessing murder.

From a blind-spot at my side, a third person emerged. My head whipped around to look at who it was, and my heart sunk as I stared into his eyes.

It was Sollux, staring at me with a perpetually annoyed expression like always. His eyes, like that of the others, were blank and colorless. He was bleeding from every orifice on his face- eyes, nose, mouth, ears. It was like his thinkpan had exploded and it was leaking through his very flesh. He was even scrawnier than he normally was, with his face so gaunt and eyes so sunken that he nearly looked like a skeleton. Unaware of all of this, he raised an eyebrow at me. 

“Well _you_ looking fucking awful, KK, what’s wrong with you?” Again, the voice wasn’t his. His lisp was gone, and as he opened his mouth to speak I noticed how nearly all of his teeth were missing.

All three of my friends gathered in front of me, standing side by side. They stared at me with matching, puzzled expressions like they had no idea why I was so appalled.

I just kept backing away. I didn’t know what to do or say

My back hit something again. Another person. But they didn’t react, I only felt an exhale of cold breath onto the back of my neck that sent chills down my spine.

Full of fear and hesitation, I slowly turned around.

It was me. Or, at the very least, what was left of some version of me. The white eyes didn’t grab my attention at all as I stared at the half of his entire body that was practically melting off and decomposing like it had been ripped apart and set on fire. Two neat stab wounds were punctured into my chest, right in the holes of the sign on my shirt.

_What the fuck,_ was my only thought. _What the absolute, shit-splattering fuck._

“What’s wrong?” He asked in a voice that wasn’t mine at all. It was quiet and smooth, with an edge of knowing to it that I couldn’t explain. Somehow, it made the bloody, melted skin and mangled chest even more unnerving.

I felt my body go completely still. All I could hear was my other self’s breathing.

He smiled. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

\--------------------

I jolted awake for a second time, sitting upright so fast I could’ve fallen forward and hit my head.

My eyes hurriedly searching the room, begging for confirmation that this wasn’t a dream, and that I’d finally woken up from my nightmare. My eyes landed on, wouldn’t you know it, Vriska. She sat on the floor against the wall, knees tucked into her chest with her arm hanging over them casually. Her hair had gotten even messier and greasier since the last time I’d seen her, and it was draped in front of her face eerily. She stared at me with narrowed eyes that were filled with resentment.

“Hey there, cullbait.” she said hoarsely. “How’d you sleep?”

I glared at her, instantly switching from fear to annoyance. “Don’t fucking call me that, you insufferable asswipe.”

She raised an eyebrow, cocking her head to the side. “Watch it, cullbait. I could’ve killed you while you were sleeping, you know.”

“Yeah? Well, you didn’t,” I rolled my eyes. “You really are just made of bitchiness, empty threats, and everything not nice, huh? Besides nothing you could’ve done would’ve been worse to the shit I already have to deal with when I go to sleep.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” I dismissed quickly. “What happened while I was sleeping?”

She shrugged. “Not much. A couple of soldiers came by with food.” She pointed towards the foot of my fabric slab. “There’s your portion. You should be grateful that I didn’t eat it, but it’s not like it matters. You’re used to starving anyway, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not used to starving, because _I_ had a lusus that actually gave a shit about me,” I retorted. “Even you can’t say that much, huh?”

“Low blow, cullbait. Are you gonna eat it or not?”

“I am!” I insisted, actually shouting from how angry I was. I looked down to where she was pointing and my eyes landed on the new meal. I didn’t classify it as breakfast, lunch, or dinner, because I didn’t even know what the hell the time, or even the day was. It was a meager bowl of what looked like a really shitty oatmeal. It was in a styrofoam bowl with a plastic spoon sticking out of it, but I still took it gratefully. I wasn’t putting it to waste, so I ate it just as enthusiastically as I’d eaten our last meal (a small loaf of gross human bread).

Once I’d scraped the last bit of cold, soggy oatmeal from the bowl, I followed the rest of my cycle routine before sitting back down on the fabric slab. Vriska and I made weak attempts at conversation throughout the whole ordeal, and while it was far from enjoyable, I did appreciate being able to talk to her without having to commit verbal war crimes against her.

Maybe it was the fact that was the only person I could understand in this entire goddamn facility, but I felt like I had a newfound respect for Vriska through all of this.

It was obvious she had something against me- probably because of the brief not-relationship that Terezi and I had, which I honestly couldn’t fathom why anyone would be jealous of just by how much of a trainwreck it had been. Even so, I felt like that no matter if we got out of here or not, we would have some level of friendship. She cared about me, one way or another. She really did. It definitely wasn’t romantic, but it was some level of solidarity. It could have to do with the fact that we’d both had crushes on the same batshit crazy girl, or that we both disguised affection towards our friends as being mean, overbearing, or bossy. But whatever it was that we somehow bonded over, I could truly tell that she _did_ care. She had to.

Vriska was obviously hungry, and had a bigger appetite than I did. She could’ve eaten my portion of food this cycle, or any of the other times, but she didn’t.

Not only that- she was in the perfect position to live out a perfect Alternian life of lavish military honor. She openly expressed disdain at me being a mutant, and she mercilessly criticized my plan when we escaped, saying that I’d get us all killed. She could’ve sold me out, but she didn’t

When she found out that I liked Terezi, she easily could’ve outed me to her right then, or even blackmailed me into staying quiet. Hell, she could’ve mind controlled me into not telling her just so that she’d have Terezi all to herself like she clearly wanted. _But she didn’t._ She’d known that Terezi liked me too, on some level, so she backed off.

It was some strange level of care or protectiveness that she felt about any of her friends, and that I felt too.

Maybe that care was why I went with her to inspect the wreckage that night.

And maybe, as I slowly began to realize, Vriska wasn’t so bad. She was an asshole, for sure, there wasn’t any doubt about that. It’s not like she deserved Terezi, but none of us did. I didn’t expect Tavros to forgive her for what she’d done to him, but frankly, the shit he went through was unforgivable no matter _who_ it happened to. But what Vriska did didn’t make her completely, inexcusably evil, or out for my blood. She was just a messed up kid who’d done some messed up things and had a messed up view of what strength was supposed to be. So, when she tried to make others ‘strong,’ she literally traumatized them. When _she_ tried to be ‘strong,’ she didn’t know how warped her perception really was.

Who _does_ know what strength is, really? Not Vriska, that’s for sure. But, since everyone knew that I was the physically weakest out of all my friends, I wasn’t in a place to judge.

It wasn’t long after my meaningful reflection of my friendship with Vriska that the guards arrived.

We knew the old song and dance by now. So we didn’t protest or even speak as they guards threw open the cell door with loaded guns in hand. The loud noise of the door slamming open startled us, though, and it made me jump off the fabric slab so suddenly that I nearly stumbled over my own feet.

With some muttering and vague gesturing that neither party understood, they forced us out of the cell. And we began to walk.

Down the eerie, echoing halls of the facility, we walked for simultaneously felt like too long and not long enough. Eventually, Vriska and I split up, with guards taking us down two separate paths and hallways. I came to tune out the buzz of the fluorescent lighting above me and the sound of the guard’s boots slapping against the concrete floor. But this time, as we walked down the hallway, I tried to remember the path we took, and take mental note of it. _At the hall across from our cell with the yellow sign above, they took me down the left path. Then we took a left turn, continued straight for two more intersections, and turned right. Or was it left? No, right. The fourth door on the right of that hallway was the room- the door had a gathering of rust at the bottom and a lamp mounted to the wall across from it._ There was no way I would remember that, but it made me feel better.

When we reached the room, I didn’t feel as nervous as I had all the times before. I was just annoyed. How stupid did the humans have to be to not get it through their heads that I couldn’t understand a word they said.

Hairface was already standing inside of the room. I rolled my eyes at him.

“You dumbasses really just can’t get it through your thick skulls that I can’t fucking understand you, huh?” I snapped at him. “I need my translator ring.”

As I sat down in the wobbly metal chair, I glanced over at the mirror on the wall.

Vriska told me a few cycles ago how she figured out that the mirror was made of one-way glass, and that there were people on the other side (she’d noticed it via her vision eightfold). Now that I looked at the glass more closely, it was obvious. I glared daggers at the mirror, hoping that whoever was on the other side got the message that I didn’t like them.

The guards didn’t tie down my arms to the chair this time, just my legs, which I appreciated.

“Right, let’s get something straight,” I announced before they could start on their stupid speech. “I’ve been trying to tell you, but since you clearly have a thinkpan that’s smaller than a bug, I’ll spell it out to you for the next goddamn time.”

He frowned, glancing between me and the other guards. I hadn’t actually spoken much during the other times they interrogated me, so despite not understanding me, he was surprised.

“I can’t understand you, you dense sack of shit.” I continued. “ _I_ need my _translator ring_ to get a _single word_ you say, because since I’m from a different fucking _planet,_ we obviously speak different languages! How do you not understand this?! Translator ring, I need it, I need it to understand you!” I continuously gestured and mimed what I was speaking, and kept tapping on my fourth finger to signify the ring. “I need the ring. The ring you took, idiot, give it back! Are you seriously so stupid that you can’t even comprehend when I spell it out for you _so simply._ The bar is on the ground, you sorry excuse for a sentient lifeform, the bar is on the ground.”

Finishing my rant, I took a deep breath, and then looked up at Hairface.

Something crossed his face. Something like realization or a sudden idea. I stopped talking, wondering if he’d actually finally gotten my entire fucking skit.

Hairface muttered something into his walkie talkie and held up a finger in a _‘wait a minute’_ gesture. Genuinely, I was shocked. Did he _actually_ understand what I was trying to convey? Holy shit, humans had more than one brain cell. The bar is still on the fucking ground for what I expected from these humans- I much preferred the other ones that were my age that had genuinely wanted to help us. I should’ve known, honestly, if Alternia taught me anything it taught me to never trust adults.

We sat there for several minutes, waiting.

Suddenly, the door popped open, not even all the way. Through the crack in the door, a woman in a long white coat poked inside the room. I recognized the woman, as she’s been drawing our blood with the needle for the past few nights. In her hand was a tiny plastic bag.

After some gibberish conversation, the woman handed the plastic bag to one of the guard cronies before quickly leaving the room again. He struggled to open the bag with his gloves on, but once he did he turned it upside down the dump the contents onto the palm of his hand. Out of it fell a bulky silver ring made of metal, with a tiny black line struck down the middle. My translator ring. _Finally,_ they understood! They’d actually gotten the translator ring after so much fucking effort. The guard walked towards me, the ring clutched between his fingers.

He outstretched his hand that was holding the ring, tentatively offering it to my finger like he was terrified that I might bite his hand off if he moved to any closer to me. I rolled my eyes, impatient as he finally let go and let the ring slide onto my hand.

Once I felt the cool metal ring slip over my finger, I let out an exhausted, angry sigh.

The guard who cautiously gave it to me had stepped back. The guards stared at me as I slowly looked up at them, awaiting a response. They held their guns as the ready, and nobody moved a muscle.

All hope of making a good first impression was gone. I glared at the humans with loathing in my eyes. "Finally," I growled through gritted teeth. "You stupid fucks figured it out!"

The guards were dumbfounded, but they clearly understood.

"So," Hairface started, in the Alternian language I could understand. His voice was grizzley and jaded, just like his expression. "I'll bet that's a ring that translates languages."

I raised an eyebrow irritably. "Actually it makes the nearest four people start pissing frog spit- yeah, no shit Troll Sherlock, it's obviously a translator ring you idiotic bitchskin!"

"My god," he muttered, staring at me incredulously. "What the hell even are you?"

"Karkat fucking Vantas, the swooning disappointment to the troll species himself. You should be honored to be in my presence really, and soak up my complete patheticness. Oh boy, I try to leave my stupidass, murderous planet for five fucking minutes and the first thing that happens is that I get kidnapped by some weird old guys. That's not weird at all! I'll bet this is just an every other week sorta thing for you dense, underdeveloped nookbrains! So where are all the other hapless alien children you snatched for zero reason?!"

"Enough, shut up," Hairface interrupted.

"I'm not done!" I yelled back. "You kidnapped me! K-I-D-N-A-P-P-E-D. And while sure, that's spineless enough as is, I can't even get started on the fact that you've been stealing my blood for some equally fucked up reason. Oh, and your friends who are so fucking obviously behind that one-way glass over there? Tell them that I think this whole place is a shithole, and that I'd be willing to vandalize it with my own grossly mutated blood just to send a message that I hate it here, if you somehow haven't gotten the memo! That's what I think of your 'setup,' you disgusting pieces of rotting oinkbeast flesh."

The three guards just stared at me, appalled. It was a ballsy move on my part to curse out the guys holding the big guns, but I was too angry to care. Besides, they had faces that were all too punchable, and since I couldn’t actually attack them, I had to go with the next best thing.

Hairface reached for his walkie-talkie and muttered into it. “We can understand the subject. He’s giving us an attitude. Questioning will commence.”

I bristed with irritation. “Bitch, I just said that my name’s Karkat, don’t call me fucking ‘subject!’”

“Right,” Hairface grunted. “Well, ‘Karkat,’ I’m gonna need you to answer a lot of questions, and no sarcasm or disrespect- I don’t take well to it, so watch your mouth. You have a lot of explaining to do. First off, we’re under the assumption that you and your little friend in the other room are extraterrestrials. Is this correct?”

I gave him an _‘are you stupid?’_ look. “Oh, no, I’m just a weird looking human. Yeah _of course_ I’m a fucking alien to you just as you’re an alien to me, you pretentious shit-mouthed fuckwit.”

Hairface blinked slowly. “What the _hell_ did I just say about watching your mouth?”

“What are you gonna do? Kill me?” I laughed in his face. “That’s just my ordinary fate with extra steps! Maybe I’d be nicer if you didn’t fucking kidnap me, or at least if you weren’t such a god damned pompous asshole about everything you say!”

My glare became venomous, and Hairface took a deep breath.

“Look, I just need you to answer me and we can get this over with,” he sighed, exasperated. “Tell me, if you are an extra terrestrial, what are you?”

I slouched further in my chair and reluctantly responded. “I’m a troll.”

“Good,” Hairface smiled fakely and bitterly, but it came off like he was just baring his teeth at me. It wasn’t intimidating- human teeth were even more blunt and useless than rustblood teeth. “That’s what I mean. I just want civil conversation. Now tell me, why in God’s name are you here, on Earth, when you clearly aren’t from here. When we found you, we were investigating the remains of a spaceship, which we could only assume was, well, yours. I need you to tell me if that’s your spaceship, why you’re here on Earth, and if you brought any more aliens with you other than just you and your friend over there.”

“Fine,” I growled, snarling at him. “Yes, that’s my spaceship. I’m here because I don't want to get caught by my empire, who wants me dead because my blood is a bit too bright red for their tastes. Happy?”

“You didn’t answer the last one,” Hairface snapped. “How many others did you bring with you.”

For a long moment, I said nothing, debating in my head on what I should say.

“No one else.” I said. “It’s just me and Vriska, who’s the troll in the other room. It was only me and her and you got both of us.”

He didn’t seem to believe this, but he didn’t argue with me.

One of the guard cronies—both of whom had been standing behind Hairface this whole time, gaping and staring like the idiots they were—finally spoke up. “Lieutenant,” he said, seemingly addressing Hairface. “I think that we ought to give this one some time to cool off before we try to question it some more. If we talk to it while it’s mad, it’ll be more inclined to lie, and you know that the Doc won’t like that.”

Hairface nodded thoughtfully, taking this into account. “Right. Fine then, take this one back to the containment area.”

“Cool off?” I exclaimed incredulously. “I’m not going to cool off, motherfucker, I’ve been angry for the past seven sweeps and don’t intend to stop now! You hear me? I’m mad and I’m gonna stay mad! Fuck you!”

He only shook his head and turned away to walk towards the door.

“It was pretty fucking over-the-top to steal Vriska’s arm!” I yelled at him as he began to walk away. “She needs that for a reason, you know!”

He kept walking, not even looking back at me. “It could’ve been weaponized.”

I grumbled, staring down at my knees. “Of course it was weaponized. Everything that Equius makes is weaponized, but it’s not like you can change that. She still needs it.”

Hairface stopped in his tracks, and turned back to look at me. He had a look of curious suspicion. “Who’s Equius?”

“No one.” I replied, not meeting his eyes.

I was uneventfully taken back to my cell without another word.

The guards made an extra effort to be quiet now, knowing that I could understand them. I had no idea why they were so scared of me, since I was most certainly the least intimidating out of all of my friends, despite trying very hard not to be. They kept their guns loaded and ready to shoot me at all times. They really were more on-edge than ever. Once we reached the cell and they opened the door, they pointed their guns at Vriska. She hadn’t moved since I last saw her, and she didn’t respond to the threat of being shot.

I was practically shoved inside without so much as a ‘sorry about this,’ or ‘see you later, alien freak.’

Trying to ignore how they treated me, I just held my head high and kept walking into the cell.

Vriska gave me a nod of acknowledgement when I entered the room, but neither of us spoke. I took a seat on the floor across from her as opposed to on the fabric slab. I crossed my legs and leaned back on the wall, which lightly hit against the wall as I did so.

I didn’t want to go to sleep, I was afraid I would have to talk to the Signless again. Besides, all this sleeping would make me weak, which was the last thing I wanted. It was better if I stayed awake, or even let Vriska have a chance to sleep instead, I didn’t want it to seem like she was watching over me or some shit, even if that’s what it felt like. Vriska wouldn’t protect me, she had better things to do. Even in a place like this. So no, I wouldn’t fall asleep.

But on the other hand…

I was reminded of what I’d spoken to the Signless about in my dream. That if he could show me anything as it happens in that moment, he could show me the facility.

I looked over at Vriska, preparing myself for what I was about to say. For a moment I glanced up at the camera in the corner of the room, and I quietly slipped my translator ring off of my finger. I didn’t want the humans to understand me for something like this. I took a deep breath and then cleared my throat. She looked up at me unceremoniously; maybe even annoyed.

“I think I might have an idea on how to get us out of here.”

She looked surprised. “...Is it a good idea?”

I gritted my teeth. “It’s an idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn, that was a fucking ride. We've got in my signature **chapter soup** of some plot-relevance, some spook, some haha funny jokes, and the ending line being some variation of "I have an idea." Either way, I had LOADS of fun writing this chapter, and I hope that you guys like it just as much as I do. I love all of you!!  
> Now for today's question: What do you think Karkat's plan is? Do you think it'll work?

**Author's Note:**

> You've reached the end! I update once or twice a month, so you'll be able to read more soon enough. Don't forget to leave a comment, I love answering any questions or responding to any feedback. Thanks for all your support!


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